Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Secondat, Charles de

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

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

Gibbon, Edward

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Sterne, Laurence

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

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

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

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

Critchfield, Jim

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

13.

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

Johnson, Samuel

14.

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

15.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

16.

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

Luther, Martin

17.

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

18.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

19.

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

20.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

21.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

22.

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

23.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

24.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

25.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

26.

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

27.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

28.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.

Colton, Charles Caleb

29.

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

30.

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

Bach, Richard

31.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Fielding, Henry

32.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

33.

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

Faulkner, William

34.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, Atwood H.

35.

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

Barrett, E.S.

36.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

37.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

38.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

39.

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

Rohn, Jim

40.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

41.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

42.

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

43.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

45.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

46.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

47.

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

48.

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

Fuller, Margaret

49.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas