Quotes about Books and Reading

Use this forum for book and reading discussion that doesn't fall into another category. Talk about books, genres, reading issues, general literature, and any other topic of particular interest to readers. If you want to start a thread about a specific book or a specific series, please do that in the section below this one.
Post Reply
User avatar
asmaahsan
Posts: 878
Joined: 05 Jan 2013, 22:32
Favorite Book: A Flicker in the Dark
Currently Reading:
Bookshelf Size: 7
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-asmaahsan.html
Latest Review: "Bodies and Beaches" by Don Yarber

Re: Quotes about Books and Reading

Post by asmaahsan »

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.

–Author Unknown
:techie-reference: I am not a life coach; life coaches me ~ Asma Fikri.
Latest Review: "Bodies and Beaches" by Don Yarber
User avatar
Phoenix98
Posts: 381
Joined: 22 Sep 2012, 00:08
Bookshelf Size: 0

Post by Phoenix98 »

Erasmus_Folly wrote:When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes
~Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536)
I hadn't thought of Erasmus in years. He was a great man, who wrote with penetrating sarcasm and humor under trying circumstances.

Erasmus Folly, are you still around?
Token conservative
User avatar
asmaahsan
Posts: 878
Joined: 05 Jan 2013, 22:32
Favorite Book: A Flicker in the Dark
Currently Reading:
Bookshelf Size: 7
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-asmaahsan.html
Latest Review: "Bodies and Beaches" by Don Yarber

Post by asmaahsan »

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx.
:techie-reference: I am not a life coach; life coaches me ~ Asma Fikri.
Latest Review: "Bodies and Beaches" by Don Yarber
User avatar
BookCollecting101
Posts: 26
Joined: 18 Sep 2011, 13:48
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-bookcollecting101.html

Post by BookCollecting101 »

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ~Rabindranath Tagore

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, is its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation. ~ Lawrence Clark Powell.

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. ~ Thomas Carlyle.

Books are the shoes with which we tread the footsteps of great minds. ~ Anonymous.

You can never be too thin, too rich or have too many books.

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. ~ Thomas Carlyle.

Books are the shoes with which we tread the footsteps of great minds.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~ G. K. Chesterton.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. - Robert Frost

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. - Mark Twain

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. - Mark Twain

It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy. – Unknown

It IS as bad as you think and they ARE out to get you. – Unknown

How many people here have telekinetic powers? Raise my hand.

Brevity is the soul of wit. William Shakespeare.

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain."

"Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble."
George Washington
(1732-1799)

"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Cervantes greets us at the National Library of Spain, in Madrid. Here’s some of what he had to say:

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.

Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.

He had a face like a blessing.

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

That’s the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

Fair and softly goes far.

He preaches well that lives well.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.

There’s no taking trout with dry breeches.
There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

The eyes those silent tongues of love.

W.H. Auden
"…a wedding cake left out in the rain."
I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing on the street.

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky

A poet’s hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prize elsewhere.


It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn
much more money writing or talking about his art than
he can by practicing it

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are
undeservedly remembered.

When I find myself in the company of
scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by
mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they
must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

White as an orchid she rode quite naked in an oyster shell on top of the sea

No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations
people do not sing. An opera plot must be, in both
senses of the word, a melodrama.

Art is born of humiliation.

"For several days after my first book was published I carried it about in my pocket, and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure that the ink had not faded." James Barrie

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

"Tis the good reader that make the good book." Emerson

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book" Thoreau

" Man builds no structure which outlives a book." Eugene Fitch Ware

"The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes." Agatha Christie

" It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give up because by that time I was too famous" Robert Benchley

"Authors in general are not good listeners." William Hazlitt

"Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book." Shakespeare

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." Hilaire Belloc

"I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book." Kenneth Rexroth

"As for you, little envious Prigs, snarling, bastard, puny Criticks, you’ll soon have railed you last: Go hang yourselves" Rabelais

"The life of writing men has always been…a bitter business. It is notoriously accompanied, for those who write well, by poverty and contempt’ or by fatuity and wealth for those who write ill." Hilaire Belloc

" Come, and take a choice of all my library; And so beguile thy sorrow." Shakespeare.

" Books are hindrances to persisting stupidity." Spanish Proverb

"This never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum." Elbert Hubbard

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." Oscar Wilde.

"Never read anything until not to have read it has bothered you for some time." Samuel Butler.
darcyb123
Posts: 126
Joined: 28 Aug 2013, 20:29
Favorite Author: Amy Tan
Favorite Book: The Far Pavilions
Currently Reading:
Bookshelf Size: 15
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-darcyb123.html
Latest Review: "Gates to Tangier" by Mois Benarroch
fav_author_id: 3701

Post by darcyb123 »

"Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

C. S. Lewis
Latest Review: "Gates to Tangier" by Mois Benarroch
smaudy44
Posts: 17
Joined: 15 Dec 2013, 16:38
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-smaudy44.html

Post by smaudy44 »

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book." - John Green
The Bookaholic
Posts: 210
Joined: 04 Dec 2013, 07:01
Bookshelf Size: 2
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-the-bookaholic.html
Latest Review: "Caught Between Two Curses" by Margo L. Dill

Post by The Bookaholic »

We read to know that we are not alone William Nicholson
Latest Review: "Caught Between Two Curses" by Margo L. Dill
User avatar
Jen319164
Posts: 169
Joined: 15 Mar 2014, 08:54
Bookshelf Size: 1
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-jen319164.html
Latest Review: "Wishes" by Leila Virou

Post by Jen319164 »

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx
Latest Review: "Wishes" by Leila Virou
luluMoon1940
Posts: 108
Joined: 17 Apr 2014, 22:03
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-lulumoon1940.html

Post by luluMoon1940 »

On the first page of Honore de Balzac's Book Le Pere Goriot he writes

"Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself; perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured; this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true."

So true. One of my most re-read books.
User avatar
tani90
Posts: 8
Joined: 02 May 2014, 04:00
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-tani90.html

Post by tani90 »

"Reading blesses the soul, it unifies the heart and brain.
What watering is to plants, reading full of rain, embellish the guts that we possess. "
- Tanya Sehgal
Colette Marie
Posts: 54
Joined: 09 May 2014, 02:30
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-colette-marie.html

Post by Colette Marie »

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If life was a book; every day would be a new page, every month would be a new chapter, and every year would be a new series.”
― Elizabeth Duivenvoorde
David Dawson
Posts: 304
Joined: 02 May 2014, 21:39
Bookshelf Size: 12
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-david-dawson.html
Latest Review: "The Mystery Factor" by Michael Brightman

Post by David Dawson »

Alan Bennett from The History Boys: "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours"
Latest Review: "The Mystery Factor" by Michael Brightman
User avatar
kimgreen
Posts: 9
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 17:15
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-kimgreen.html

Post by kimgreen »

"So many books, so little time"
book_girl86
Posts: 13
Joined: 08 Jul 2014, 11:39
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-book-girl86.html

Post by book_girl86 »

My favorite quote about reading is by Elizabeth Hardwick, "The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wude kind. It is a moral illumination."

That quote alone sums up everything about reading which is why I like it so much.
pagenumber394
Posts: 163
Joined: 14 Jun 2014, 15:38
Bookshelf Size: 0
Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-pagenumber394.html

Post by pagenumber394 »

Books are like mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside of you. - Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it, and those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down it's pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. -Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on the reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. -Carloz Ruiz Zafon.

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that its an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers only what we carry inside of us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

I HIGHLY reccommend The Shadow of the Wind to everyone. There are so many great quotes about books and reading. This book is a gift to booklovers. The writing is phenomenal, dark, and extraordinary.
Post Reply

Return to “General Book & Reading Discussion”