Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Lee, Spike

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

Maclennan, Hugh

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

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

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

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.

10.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wycherley, William

11.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

12.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

13.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

14.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

18.

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

Bach, Richard

19.

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

20.

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

Rohn, Jim

21.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

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

Morely, John

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.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

France, Anatole

25.

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

Secondat, Charles de

26.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

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

Murray, William

28.

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

Hugo, Victor

29.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

30.

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

Ruskin, John

31.

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

Wilde, Oscar

32.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

34.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

35.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

36.

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

37.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

38.

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

39.

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

Rochman, Hazel

40.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

41.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

42.

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

43.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

44.

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

45.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

46.

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

47.

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

Barrett, E.S.

48.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

49.

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

Faulkner, William

50.

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