Motivational Quotes

Books

Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.

- Evan Esar

Best Quotes about Books

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.

Harold Bloom

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.

Paxton Hood

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

Robertson Davies

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

Henry James

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

Dame Rose Macaulay

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Ezra Pound

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.

Frank Zappa

Oh for a book and a shady nook...

John Wilson

10.

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

Groucho Marx

11.

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Charles De Secondat

12.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

13.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

14.

I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

Upton Sinclair

15.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles W. Eliot

16.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...

Dwight D. Eisenhower

17.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Jane Austen

18.

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.

Marie de Sevigne

19.

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.

Alfred Hitchcock

20.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Sir Francis Bacon

21.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how amazing the people who write books are. Writers love writing books like this, and for some reason, we let them get away with it.

Josh Lieb

22.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

G. K. Chesterton

23.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Robertson Davies

24.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G. K. Chesterton

25.

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Michel de Montaigne

26.

Reading this book is like waiting for the first shoe to drop.

Ralph Novak

27.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

W. Somerset Maugham

28.

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

William Goldman

29.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

30.

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

31.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith

32.

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

33.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. Auden

34.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

Bell Hooks

35.

Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with'em, then we grow out of'em and leave'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Dorothy L. Sayers

36.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Salman Rushdie

37.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton

38.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

39.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Sir Richard Steele

40.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

41.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero

42.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

43.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Christopher Morley

44.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein

45.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

46.

Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.

John Witherspoon

47.

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

William Shakespeare

48.

Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.

Evan Esar

49.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Horace Mann

50.

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Arnold Lobel