Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

- Rosten, Leo

Best Quotes about Books - reading

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

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

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

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

Barrett, E.S.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

10.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

11.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

12.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

13.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

14.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

15.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

16.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

17.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

20.

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

21.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

22.

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

Howells, William Dean

23.

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.

24.

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

Lee, Spike

25.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

26.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

27.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

28.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

29.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho

30.

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

Porter, Noah

31.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

32.

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

Auden, W. H.

33.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

34.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

35.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

36.

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.

37.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Rhys, Jean

38.

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

Chappell, Warren

39.

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

40.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

41.

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

Pascal, Blaise

42.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

43.

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

44.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

45.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

46.

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

Trollope, Anthony

47.

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

48.

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

Faulkner, William

49.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

50.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage