Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Porter, Noah

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

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.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

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

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

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

Byron, Lord

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

10.

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

11.

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Bach, Richard

16.

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

Hope, Anthony

17.

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

Hunt, Leigh

18.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

19.

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

20.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

21.

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.

22.

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.

23.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

24.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

25.

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

26.

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

27.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

28.

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

29.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

30.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

31.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

32.

In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.

Lytton, Lord Edward

33.

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

Chappell, Warren

34.

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

Faulkner, William

35.

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.

36.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

37.

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

Joubert, Joseph

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Ruskin, John

41.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

42.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

43.

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

Luther, Martin

44.

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

Wycherley, William

45.

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

Dane, Frank

46.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

47.

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

Twain, Mark

48.

'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

49.

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

50.

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''