Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

Hugo, Victor

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

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

Geneen, Harold S.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

Miller, Henry

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

Howells, William Dean

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

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

Belloc, Hilaire

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

Rohn, Jim

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

Jackson, Holbrook

10.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

Lincoln, Abraham

11.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Hugo, Victor

15.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Faulkner, William

16.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

Phelps, William Lyon

22.

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

Descartes, Rene

23.

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

24.

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

25.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

26.

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

27.

A wicked book cannot repent.

Proverb

28.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

29.

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

30.

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

Rohn, Jim

31.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Lamb, Charles

32.

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

33.

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

34.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

35.

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

Lee, Harper

36.

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Lee, Spike

37.

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

38.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Twain, Mark

40.

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

41.

The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

42.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.

43.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Camus, Albert

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Harington, John

47.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Hazlitt, William

48.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet -- if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

Miller, Henry

49.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

50.

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

Pound, Ezra