Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

- Swartz, J.

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Slaon Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time ... but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.

Peters, Thomas J.

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

Twain, Mark

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

Wesley, John

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Kempis, Thomas

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

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

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

10.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Disney, Walt

11.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

13.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

14.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

15.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

16.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

17.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

18.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

19.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

21.

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

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.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Secondat, Charles de

27.

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

Temple, Sir William

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Frost, Robert

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

33.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

34.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

35.

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.

36.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

37.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

38.

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

Dawkins, John

39.

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

40.

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

41.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

42.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

43.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

44.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

45.

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

Mccay, James T.

46.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

47.

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

Luther, Martin

48.

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

Brown, Les

49.

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

Mencken, H. L.

50.

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