Quotes about books-reading

I've never know any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

— Charles de Secondat

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

— Giorgos Seferis

O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking breast.

— William Shakespeare

How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

— George Bernard Shaw

Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilette --throw Roderick Random into the closet --put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man; thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa! cram Ovid behind the bolster; there --put The Man of Feeling into your pocket. Now for them.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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.

— Andre Sinyavsky

Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

No furniture is so charming as books.

— Sydney Smith

Live always in the best company when you read.

— Sydney Smith

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

— Socrates

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

— Steven Spielberg

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.

— Sir Richard Steele

A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

— John Steinbeck

The age of the book is almost gone.

— George Steiner

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

— Henri B. Stendhal

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, --you might as well take the book along with them; --one cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; --he steps forth like a bridegroom, --bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

— Laurence Sterne

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.

— Laurence Sterne

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?

— Fred Stoller

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

— William Styron

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.

— J. Swartz

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed

— Sir William Temple

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

— Sir William Temple

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

— Helen Terry

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

— William M. Thackeray

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

— Henry David Thoreau

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

— Henry David Thoreau

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books.

— Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

— Henry David Thoreau

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

— James Thurber

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

— Atwood H. Townsend

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.

— Thomas Traherne

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.

— G. M. Trevelyan

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

— Anthony Trollope

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

— Herbert True

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?

— Marina Tsvetaeva

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.

— Martin Tupper

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

— Mark Twain

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Source Unknown

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

— Source Unknown

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

— Raoul Vaneigem

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

— Voltaire

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

— Voltaire

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

— Carolyn Wells

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

— John Wesley

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

— Jessamyn West

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

— Edwin P. Whipple

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.

— Walt Whitman

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

— Walt Whitman

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

— Oscar Wilde

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

— Bert Williams

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

— Thomas Wolfe

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?

— Virginia Woolf

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.

— Sir Peregrine Worsthorne

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

— Sir Christopher Wren

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

— William Wycherley

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

To read too many books is harmful.

— Mao Zedong

The most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card.

— Michael Lipsey

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

— Erica Jong

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

— Jane Austin

To read too many books is dangerous.

— Mao Tse Tung

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others, but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.

— Francis Bacon

Books and marriage go ill together.

— Moliere