Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

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

Byron, Lord

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.

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Barstow, Stan

10.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Bloom, Allan

11.

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

Spielberg, Steven

12.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

13.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

14.

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

15.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

16.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

17.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

18.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

19.

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

20.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

21.

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

Coolio

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Hugo, Victor

25.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

26.

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

27.

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

29.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Johnson

30.

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.

31.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

32.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

Secondat, Charles de

36.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

37.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

38.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

39.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

40.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

41.

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Cuyler, Theodore L.

42.

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.

43.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

More, Hannah

44.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Collier, Jeremy

45.

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.

46.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes, Carlos

47.

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

48.

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

Joubert, Joseph

49.

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

Carey, Joyce

50.

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