Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Chambers, Oswald

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

Burgess, Anthony

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

10.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Landor, Walter Savage

11.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Wolfe, Thomas

12.

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

13.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

14.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

15.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

Phillips, Wendell

17.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

Ruskin, John

20.

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

21.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

22.

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

Whitman, Walt

23.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

24.

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

25.

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

Ruskin, John

26.

There is no robber worse than a bad book.

Proverb, Italian

27.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Balfour, Arthur James

28.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Frost, Robert

29.

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

30.

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

31.

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Kump, Peter

32.

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

Rohn, Jim

33.

Beware of the person of one book.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

34.

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

Porter, Noah

35.

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

Rohn, Jim

36.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

37.

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

38.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

Williams, Bert

39.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson

40.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

West, Jessamyn

41.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Fusselman, W.

42.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

43.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

Channing, William Ellery

44.

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

Hugo, Victor

45.

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

46.

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Johnson, Samuel

47.

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

48.

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

Lee, Harper

49.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

Morely, John