Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.

Cooley, Charles Horton

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

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Rostand, Jean

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

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

Rosenbach, A. S. W.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

10.

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

11.

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

Descartes, Rene

12.

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.

13.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

14.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

Day, Clarence

15.

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

16.

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

Mccay, James T.

17.

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

Hugo, Victor

18.

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

Gibbon, Edward

19.

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

Joubert, Joseph

20.

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

21.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

25.

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

Pound, Ezra

26.

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

Auden, W. H.

27.

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

Morely, John

28.

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.

Hood, Paxton

29.

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

Wycherley, William

30.

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

31.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

32.

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

Carlyle, Thomas

33.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

34.

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

35.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Fuller, Margaret

39.

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

40.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

41.

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

42.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

43.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

44.

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.

45.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

46.

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

Carey, Joyce

47.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

50.

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