Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Books - reading

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

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.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Byron, Lord

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

11.

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

12.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Chambers, Robert

13.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

14.

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

Temple, Sir William

15.

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Blackie, Professor

16.

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

17.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Proverb, American

18.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

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

Brown, Les

23.

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

24.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it.

Hadas, Moses

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Descartes, Rene

32.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

33.

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

Kempis, Thomas

34.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

35.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

36.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Brodsky, Joseph

37.

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

Barrett, E.S.

38.

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

39.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

Hope, Anthony

40.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

41.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

42.

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

43.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

45.

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

46.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

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

Secondat, Charles de

48.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

49.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich