Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

- Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

Best Quotes about Books - reading

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

Byron, Lord

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.

Choate, Rufus

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

Steele, Sir Richard

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Barrie, Sir James M.

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

Rohn, Jim

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

10.

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

Milton, John

11.

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

Hugo, Victor

12.

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

Hope, Anthony

13.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Mann, Horace

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

16.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Goldsmith, Oliver

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Temple, Sir William

20.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

21.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Carter, Angela

23.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

Stendhal, Henri B.

24.

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

25.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Forster, Edward M.

26.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Bruyere, Jean De La

27.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Lee, Harper

28.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

29.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

30.

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

Harington, John

31.

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

Critchfield, Jim

32.

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

Ruskin, John

33.

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Horowitz, Lois

34.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

35.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

36.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Voltaire

37.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

38.

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

Rohn, Jim

39.

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Wells, Carolyn

40.

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.

41.

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

Spielberg, Steven

42.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Vaneigem, Raoul

43.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

44.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

45.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

46.

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, moldering books.

Sinyavsky, Andre

47.

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

48.

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

49.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Gissing, George Robert

50.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney