Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Schopenhauer, Arthur

Best Quotes about Books - reading

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

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

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

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

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

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.

Styron, William

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

Lincoln, Abraham

10.

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

11.

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

Blackie, Professor

12.

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Secondat, Charles de

13.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

14.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

15.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

16.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

17.

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

18.

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

Rohn, Jim

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

21.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

22.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

23.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

25.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

26.

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

27.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Barrett, E.S.

31.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

35.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

36.

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

37.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

38.

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

Johnson, Samuel

39.

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

40.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Hugo, Victor

44.

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

Temple, Sir William

45.

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

46.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

47.

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

48.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

49.

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

Brown, Les

50.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet