Quotes about books - reading

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

Cicero, Marcus T. on books - reading
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"Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them."

Clarendon on books - reading   

"Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers."

Cobbett, William on books - reading   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation."

Collier, Jeremy on books - reading   

"Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books."

Colton, Charles Caleb on books - reading
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"Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy."

Colton, Charles Caleb on books - reading
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"A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies."

Cooley, Charles Horton on books - reading   

"I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book."

Coolio on books - reading
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"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 on books - reading
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"You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff."

Critchfield, Jim on books - reading   

"The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal blocks or bites of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental picture and entertainment-not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant."

Cutler, Wade E. on books - reading   

"A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality."

Cuyler, Theodore L. on books - reading   

"The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected."

Dane, Frank on books - reading   

"Next, in importance to books are their titles."

Davies, Paul on books - reading   

"If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language."

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

Dawkins, John on books - reading   

"The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions."

Dawson, Christopher on books - reading   

"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   

"Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use"

Denham, Sir John on books - reading   

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

Descartes, Rene on books - reading
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"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."

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

"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."

Dickinson, Emily on books - reading   

"He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust."

Dickinson, Emily on books - reading
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"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."

Disney, Walt on books - reading
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"I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter."

Disney, Walt on books - reading   

"Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing."

Disraeli, Benjamin on books - reading   

"Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."

Disraeli, Benjamin on books - reading
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"There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing."

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

"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 on books - reading   

"Never judge a book by its movie."

Eagan, J. W. on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader."

Eagleton, Terry on books - reading   

"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 on books - reading   

"We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living."

Edwards, Tryon 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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"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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"Never read any book that is not a year old."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading   

"Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading   

"Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading   

"'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on books - reading