Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Books - reading

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

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

Critchfield, Jim

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

12.

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

13.

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

Carey, Joyce

14.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

15.

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

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.

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

Wycherley, William

18.

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

19.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

20.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

21.

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

22.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Vaneigem, Raoul

23.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

24.

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

25.

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

Pound, Ezra

26.

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Benjamin, Walter

27.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

28.

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

29.

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.

30.

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

Milton, John

31.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

32.

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

Wilde, Oscar

33.

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

34.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

35.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

36.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

37.

You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

42.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

43.

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

44.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

45.

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

Auden, W. H.

46.

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

Coolio

47.

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

Ruskin, John

48.

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

49.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

50.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.