Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Joubert, Joseph

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

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

Maclennan, Hugh

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Rochman, Hazel

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

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

Morely, John

10.

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

11.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

12.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

13.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Thackeray, William M.

14.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

15.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Bloom, Allan

16.

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

17.

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

Forster, Edward M.

18.

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

Barstow, Stan

19.

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

20.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

21.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

22.

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

23.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

24.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Critchfield, Jim

29.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

30.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

31.

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

32.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

33.

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

Rohn, Jim

34.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

35.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

36.

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

Blackie, Professor

37.

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

Phillips, Wendell

38.

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

Brown, Les

39.

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

40.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

41.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

42.

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

Hope, Anthony

43.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

44.

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

45.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

46.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

47.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

48.

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

Camus, Albert

49.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles