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

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

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

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

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

Tupper, Martin

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

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

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

10.

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.

11.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

12.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

13.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

Secondat, Charles de

16.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

17.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

18.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

19.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

20.

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

Murray, William

21.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

22.

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

Coolio

23.

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

Critchfield, Jim

24.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

25.

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.

26.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

27.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

28.

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

Wycherley, William

29.

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

30.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

31.

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

32.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

33.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

34.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

35.

To read too many books is harmful.

Zedong, Mao

36.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

37.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Marcel, Anthony

38.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Twain, Mark

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Pound, Ezra

42.

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

43.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

44.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

45.

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.

46.

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

47.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

48.

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

Wilde, Oscar

49.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.