Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

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

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Camus, Albert

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Trollope, Anthony

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

12.

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

Temple, Sir William

13.

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

Byron, Lord

14.

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

15.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

17.

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

Forster, Edward M.

18.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

19.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

21.

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

Brown, Les

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Joubert, Joseph

25.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

26.

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

Hadas, Moses

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Ruskin, John

30.

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

Luther, Martin

31.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

39.

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

Murray, William

40.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

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

42.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

43.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Penn, William

44.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

45.

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''

46.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

47.

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

48.

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

Gibbon, Edward

49.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

50.

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

Milton, John