Motivational Quotes

Books

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

- Sir Francis Bacon

Best Quotes about Books

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

I read part of it all the way through.

Samuel Goldwyn

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Groucho Marx

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

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

Ralph Novak

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

Dame Rose Macaulay

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Sir Arthur Helps

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

Marie de Sevigne

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

10.

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

Evan Esar

11.

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

12.

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

Groucho Marx

13.

I have read your book and much like it.

Moses Hadas

14.

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

Sir Richard Steele

15.

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

16.

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

Bell Hooks

17.

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

18.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

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.

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

21.

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

22.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

George Herbert

23.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Austin Phelps

24.

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

Christopher Morley

25.

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

William Goldman

26.

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

27.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

28.

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Cicero

32.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Sydney Smith

33.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Sir Francis Bacon

34.

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

G. K. Chesterton

35.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

36.

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

37.

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

Charles De Secondat

38.

Read at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.

Randy Pausch

39.

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

40.

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

Upton Sinclair

41.

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.

Anna Quindlen

42.

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

John Witherspoon

43.

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

44.

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

Robertson Davies

45.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

46.

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

47.

Oh for a book and a shady nook...