Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

- Rushdie, Salman

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

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

Critchfield, Jim

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Vaneigem, Raoul

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

Proverb, American

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Pound, Ezra

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

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

10.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

11.

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

12.

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

Tupper, Martin

13.

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

Auden, W. H.

14.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

15.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

16.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

17.

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

Johnson, Samuel

18.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

19.

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

20.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

21.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

22.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

23.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

24.

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

25.

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

Coolio

26.

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

Brown, Les

27.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

28.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

29.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

30.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

31.

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

32.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

33.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

34.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

35.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

36.

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

37.

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

Camus, Albert

38.

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

Luther, Martin

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

43.

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

44.

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

Hood, Thomas

45.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

46.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

47.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

48.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

49.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

50.

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