Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

- Proverb, Italian

Best Quotes about Books - reading

'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

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Slaon Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time ... but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.

Peters, Thomas J.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

Faulkner, William

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

10.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

12.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

13.

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

Pascal, Blaise

14.

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

Harington, John

15.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

16.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

17.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

18.

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

Wilde, Oscar

19.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

20.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

21.

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

22.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

Murray, William

23.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

24.

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

25.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

26.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

27.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

28.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

29.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

30.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

31.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

32.

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

Hugo, Victor

33.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

34.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

35.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

36.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

37.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

38.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

39.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

40.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

41.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Trollope, Anthony

42.

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

Temple, Sir William

43.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

44.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

45.

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

46.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

47.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

48.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

49.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

50.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.