Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring

- Chappell, Warren

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

A book that is shut is but a block.

Fuller, Thomas

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Thurber, James

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

Mencken, H. L.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Twain, Mark

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

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.

Descartes, Rene

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

10.

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.

Fuller, Margaret

11.

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

Byron, Lord

12.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Whipple, Edwin P.

13.

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

14.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Forster, Edward M.

15.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Moliere

16.

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

Wesley, John

17.

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

18.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

19.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Maclennan, Hugh

20.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Carey, Joyce

22.

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

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.

Calano, Jimmy

25.

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

Hugo, Victor

26.

Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]

Bach, Richard

27.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Benjamin, Walter

28.

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Dawkins, John

29.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

30.

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

Critchfield, Jim

31.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Colton, Charles Caleb

32.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

Disney, Walt

33.

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

34.

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Gibbon, Edward

35.

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

36.

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.

Morely, John

37.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

38.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Adler, Mortimer J.

39.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Sandwell, B. K.

40.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

Whitman, Walt

41.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

Brooke, Rupert

42.

Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.

Brown, Les

43.

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.

44.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.

Hemingway, Ernest

45.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

46.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

Neruda, Pablo

47.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Hugo, Victor

48.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.

Trevelyan, G. M.

49.

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Rushdie, Salman

50.

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.

Gross, Jacquelyn