"Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter."

Hood, Paxton on books - reading   

"The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul."

Hood, Paxton on books - reading   

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on books - reading
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"Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."

Hemingway, Ernest on books - reading   

"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 on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."

Hayakawa, S. I. on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

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

Unknown, Source on books - reading   

"The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves."

Forster, Edward M. on books - reading   

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body."

Fuller, Margaret on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"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. on books - reading
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"The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one."

Goldsmith, Sir James on 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 on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination."

Hardwick, Elizabeth on books - reading   

"Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the 'someday I'll' philosophy."

Waitley, Denis on procrastination
8 fans of this quote   

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."

Churchill, Winston on quotations
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"Books that have become classics -- books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal -- always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay."

Aldrich, Thomas B. on books - classics
3 fans of this quote   

"There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - classics   

"The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living."

Hobbes, Thomas on books - classics   

"A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man."

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De on books - classics   

"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."

Pound, Ezra on books - classics   

"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 on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."

Fadiman, Clifton on books - reading   

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

Bevan, Aneurin on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"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 on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"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 on books - reading
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"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
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"He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes."

Barrow on books - reading
9 fans of this quote   

"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider."

Bacon, Francis on books - reading
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"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
17 fans of this quote   

"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. on books - reading
22 fans of this quote   

"Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."

Addison, Joseph on books - reading
12 fans of this quote   

"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."

Bradbury, Malcolm on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"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 on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"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 on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

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

Erasmus, Desiderius on books - reading
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"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading
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"No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters."

Eliot, George on books - reading
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"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead."

Day, Clarence on books - reading   

"It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours."

Channing, William Ellery on books - reading
3 fans of this quote