Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

- Woolf, Virginia

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Brookner, Anita

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

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

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

10.

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

11.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

12.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Fuller, Margaret

13.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

15.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

16.

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Rochman, Hazel

17.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

18.

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

19.

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

Coolio

20.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

21.

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

Hope, Anthony

22.

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

23.

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

24.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

25.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Marcel, Anthony

27.

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

28.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Fadiman, Clifton

29.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

30.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

31.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

32.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

33.

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

Morely, John

34.

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

35.

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

Kempis, Thomas

36.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Ruskin, John

37.

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

38.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Bradbury, Malcolm

39.

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

Secondat, Charles de

40.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

41.

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.

Hunt, Leigh

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

45.

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

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.

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

Hadas, Moses

48.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

49.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

50.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.

Milton, John