Quotes about books - reading

"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
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"The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just."

Brookner, Anita on books - reading   

"It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything."

Brougham, Lord Henry P. on books - reading
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Brown, Les on books - reading
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"Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on books - reading
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"Books succeed, and lives fail."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on books - reading
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"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 on books - reading   

"Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need."

Buckingham, Duke of on books - reading   

"Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on books - reading   

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on books - reading   

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

Butler, Samuel on books - reading
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"'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it."

Byron, Lord on books - reading   

"The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat."

Byron, Lord on books - reading   

"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 on books - reading   

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

Camus, Albert on books - reading   

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

Carey, Joyce on books - reading   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on books - reading
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"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books."

Carlyle, Thomas on books - reading
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"If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that."

Carlyle, Thomas on books - reading   

"Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms."

Carter, Angela on books - reading
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"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 on books - reading   

"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 on books - reading
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"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 on books - reading   

"Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind."

Chambers, Robert on books - reading
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"Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on books - reading   

"At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable."

Chandler, Raymond on books - reading   

"A good title is the title of a successful book."

Chandler, Raymond 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
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"God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages."

Channing, William Ellery on books - reading
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"Every man is a volume if you know how to read him."

Channing, William Ellery on books - reading   

"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring"

Chappell, Warren on books - reading
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"Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote."

Chesterfield, Lord on books - reading
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"Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads."

Chesterfield, Lord on books - reading
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"The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on books - reading   

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on books - reading   

"A book is the only immortality."

Choate, Rufus on books - reading
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"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 on books - reading
3 fans of this quote