Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Rohn, Jim

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

Harington, John

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

Critchfield, Jim

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Martineau, Harriet

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

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

Lee, Spike

10.

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

Barstow, Stan

11.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

16.

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

17.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

18.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

20.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

21.

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Luther, Martin

22.

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

23.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Bennett, Arnold

24.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

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.

26.

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

Mccay, James T.

27.

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

Whitman, Walt

28.

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

29.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

30.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

32.

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

Howells, William Dean

33.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Johnson, Samuel

34.

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.

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.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

37.

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire

42.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

43.

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

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

46.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Hardwick, Elizabeth

47.

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

Levine, Ghita

48.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

49.

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.

50.

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.