Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A book worth reading is worth buying.

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

Ruskin, John

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Gibbon, Edward

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

Brown, Les

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

Critchfield, Jim

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.

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

10.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

11.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

12.

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

Chappell, Warren

13.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

14.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

15.

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

16.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

17.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

18.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

19.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

20.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

21.

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

22.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

23.

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

24.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

25.

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

Morely, John

26.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

27.

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.

28.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

29.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

33.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

34.

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

Hope, Anthony

35.

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

36.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

38.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

39.

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

40.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

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.

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

Murray, William

43.

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

46.

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

Dane, Frank

47.

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

48.

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

Hunt, Leigh

49.

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

50.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Aubrey, John