Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Books - reading

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Wilde, Oscar

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

Lawrence, D. H.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

Twain, Mark

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

Fuller, Margaret

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

Rohn, Jim

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Pound, Ezra

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Phillips, Wendell

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

Davies, Robertson

10.

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

Kempis, Thomas

11.

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

12.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Kingsley, Charles

13.

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

Worsthorne, Sir Peregrine

14.

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

Rochman, Hazel

15.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Hood, Thomas

18.

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

Marx, Groucho

19.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Mansfield, Katherine

20.

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

Barstow, Stan

21.

A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Carey, Joyce

22.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

Mencken, H. L.

23.

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

Hugo, Victor

24.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

25.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Kieran, John

29.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

McKenna, Richard

30.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.

Rohn, Jim

31.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

Shaw, George Bernard

32.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Auden, W. H.

33.

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

34.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

35.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Crane, Frank

37.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

Tupper, Martin

38.

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

39.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

40.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Baker, Nicholson

41.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joubert, Joseph

42.

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

Lytton, Lord Edward

43.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

44.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Eco, Umberto

45.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

46.

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

Hope, Anthony

47.

In any situation, ask yourself: What strengths do I possess that can contribute towards accomplishing something in this situation? Then follow through.

48.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Porter, Noah

49.

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

50.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Berger, John