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

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

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

Joubert, Joseph

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

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

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

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

Pound, Ezra

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

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

Kempis, Thomas

Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

Faulkner, William

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Critchfield, Jim

13.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

14.

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

Luther, Martin

15.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

16.

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

Morely, John

17.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

18.

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

19.

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

Eagleton, Terry

20.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

21.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

22.

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

Faulkner, William

23.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Locke, John

25.

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

Byron, Lord

26.

The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal blocks or bites of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental picture and entertainment-not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant.

Cutler, Wade E.

27.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing, William Ellery

28.

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

Descartes, Rene

29.

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

30.

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

31.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Spielberg, Steven

35.

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

Dawkins, John

36.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

37.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

38.

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

Bach, Richard

39.

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

Rohn, Jim

40.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John

41.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

42.

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

Wycherley, William

43.

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

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.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

46.

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

47.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

48.

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

49.

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

Carey, Joyce

50.

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

Barrett, E.S.