Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

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

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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.

11.

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

Bach, Richard

12.

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.

13.

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

Harington, John

14.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

15.

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

Rochman, Hazel

16.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

17.

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

18.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Keith, Sir Arthur

19.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Blackie, Professor

24.

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

Barstow, Stan

25.

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

26.

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

Gibbon, Edward

27.

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

28.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

29.

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

Milton, John

30.

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

Byron, Lord

31.

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

32.

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

Johnson, Samuel

33.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

34.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

35.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

36.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

37.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

39.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

40.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

41.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

42.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

43.

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

44.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

45.

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

46.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

47.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

48.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

49.

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