Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Brodsky, Joseph

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

Spielberg, Steven

This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

Parker, Dorothy

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

Phelps, William Lyon

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

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

Forster, Edward M.

Books succeed, and lives fail.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

10.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

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

13.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

14.

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

Kempis, Thomas

15.

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Mencken, H. L.

16.

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Benjamin, Walter

17.

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

18.

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

Coolio

19.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

20.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Leacock, Stephen B.

21.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

22.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Marx, Groucho

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

Chappell, Warren

27.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

28.

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.

Mccay, James T.

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

31.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

32.

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

Morely, John

33.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

34.

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.

35.

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

Byron, Lord

36.

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

37.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

38.

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

Forster, Edward M.

39.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

40.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

41.

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

42.

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

Channing, William Ellery

43.

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

44.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

45.

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

Byron, Lord

46.

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

Pound, Ezra

47.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

Jackson, George Holbrook

48.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

49.

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.

50.

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