Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

- Schopenhauer, Arthur

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

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

Barstow, Stan

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.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

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

Johnson, Samuel

10.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn

11.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

12.

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

13.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

14.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

15.

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

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

19.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

20.

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

Morely, John

21.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

22.

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

23.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Carter, Angela

24.

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

Lowell, James Russell

25.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

26.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

31.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

32.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

34.

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

35.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

38.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

39.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

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

Camus, Albert

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

45.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

46.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

47.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

48.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Fuller, Margaret

50.

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