Motivational Quotes

Books - reading

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

- Forster, Edward M.

Best Quotes about Books - reading

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

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Tsvetaeva, Marina

For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.

Lejeune, Caroline

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

True, Herbert

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there -- that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Miller, Henry

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Mccosh

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!

Baudelaire, Charles

10.

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

Hugo, Victor

11.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

Traherne, Thomas

12.

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

Bach, Richard

13.

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

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

Dawkins, John

15.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Bury, Richard De

16.

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

17.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Kirk, E.N.

21.

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

Spielberg, Steven

22.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Adler, Mortimer J.

23.

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

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.

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

26.

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

Maclennan, Hugh

27.

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

Porter, Noah

28.

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

Wilde, Oscar

29.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Rostand, Jean

30.

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

31.

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Locke, John

32.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin

33.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Ruskin, John

34.

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

Wesley, John

35.

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

Sandwell, B. K.

36.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Samuel, Herbert

37.

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

Phelps, William Lyon

38.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Smith, Sydney

39.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Asimov, Isaac

40.

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.

41.

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.

42.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Woolf, Virginia

43.

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.

Styron, William

44.

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.

45.

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

Whitman, Walt

46.

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

47.

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

Rohn, Jim

48.

The age of the book is almost gone.

Steiner, George

49.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko, Yoshida

50.

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

Carey, Joyce