Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

- Asimov, Isaac

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Temple, Sir William

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

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Belloc, Hilaire

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.

Miller, Henry

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.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

12.

The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal blocks or bites of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental picture and entertainment-not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant.

Cutler, Wade E.

13.

When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

Baldwin, James

14.

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

Secondat, Charles de

15.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

16.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.

Hood, Thomas

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

21.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Keith, Sir Arthur

22.

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

23.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Orwell, George

24.

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

25.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

26.

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

27.

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

Rohn, Jim

28.

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

29.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

30.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Hugo, Victor

32.

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

Ruskin, John

33.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

34.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

35.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

36.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Mallarme, Stephane

37.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

38.

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

39.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

Socrates

40.

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Wesley, John

41.

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.

42.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

43.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

Milton, John

44.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Ruskin, John

46.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers, Oswald

47.

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

Byron, Lord

48.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Lawrence, D. H.

49.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

50.

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

Spielberg, Steven