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

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

Carlyle, Thomas

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

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.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

10.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

11.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

12.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

13.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

14.

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

15.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

16.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

17.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

18.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

19.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

20.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

21.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

22.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

23.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Buckingham, Duke of

24.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

25.

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

Harington, John

26.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

27.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

28.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

29.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

30.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

33.

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

Barrett, E.S.

34.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

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

36.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

Critchfield, Jim

37.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

38.

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

Luther, Martin

39.

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

Rohn, Jim

40.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

41.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Eliot, George

42.

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

Whitman, Walt

43.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

44.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

46.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

48.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

49.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

50.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.