Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

- Porter, Noah

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

10.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

11.

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

12.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

13.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Hope, Anthony

14.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

15.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

16.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

17.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

18.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

19.

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Steinbeck, John

20.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

21.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

22.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Wilde, Oscar

23.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

24.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

25.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

26.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

27.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

28.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

29.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

31.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

33.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

34.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

35.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

36.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

37.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

38.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

39.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

40.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

41.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Swartz, J.

42.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

43.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

44.

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

45.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

46.

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

48.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

49.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

50.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo