Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

- West, Jessamyn

Best Quotes about Books - reading

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Terry, Helen

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

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

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

Voltaire

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

Next, in importance to books are their titles.

Davies, Paul

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

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

Kempis, Thomas

15.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

16.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

17.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

18.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

19.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

25.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

26.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Aubrey, John

27.

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

28.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John

29.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

30.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Benson, Arthur Christopher

31.

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

32.

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

33.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

34.

The book you don't read won't help.

Rohn, Jim

35.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

36.

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

Mallarme, Stephane

37.

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

38.

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

39.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Lawrence, D. H.

40.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Dane, Frank

41.

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

Secondat, Charles de

42.

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

43.

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

Hadas, Moses

44.

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

45.

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

Temple, Sir William

46.

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

Brown, Les

47.

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

Hope, Anthony

48.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

49.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Huxley, Aldous

50.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward