Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

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

Morely, John

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

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.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Seferis, Giorgos

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Butler, Samuel

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

10.

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

11.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Ruskin, John

12.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Barrett, E.S.

13.

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

14.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

15.

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

Kempis, Thomas

16.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

17.

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

Phillips, Wendell

18.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

19.

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

20.

I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.

Coolio

21.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

22.

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

23.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Lowell, James Russell

24.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

26.

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.

Mcluhan, Marshall

27.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Edwards, Tryon

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.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

30.

Read good, big important things.

Noonan, Peggy

31.

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

Leacock, Stephen B.

32.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

33.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.

Kingsley, Charles

35.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

36.

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

Spielberg, Steven

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Bachelard, Gaston

41.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

Chandler, Raymond

42.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

43.

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

Hope, Anthony

44.

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

Secondat, Charles de

45.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

46.

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

Vaneigem, Raoul

47.

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

Brown, Les

48.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Rohn, Jim

49.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

50.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Swartz, J.