Inspiring Quotes About Books

If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

~ Winston S. Churchill

 

Books were my pass to personal freedom.

~ Oprah Winfrey

 

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

~ Benjamin Franklin

 

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

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

~ Harry S Truman

 

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
~ Thomas Jefferson

 

What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

 

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

~ William Godwin

 

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

~ George Washington Carver

 

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

~ Ray Bradbury

 

My Alma Mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

~ Malcolm X

 

Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.

~ Oprah Winfrey

 

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

~ Thomas Merton

 

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

~ Will Rogers

 

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

~ B. F. Skinner

 

What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.

~ J. D. Salinger

 

The greatest luxury I know is sitting up reading in bed.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

 

I never feel lonely if I’ve got a book – they’re like old friends. Even if you’re not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they’re part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.

~ Emilia Fox

 

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

~ Mark Twain

 

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

~ Mary Oliver

 

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

~ Abraham Lincoln

 

All the people who fought for freedom were my heroes. I mean, that was the sort of story I liked reading… freedom struggles and so on.

~ Indira Gandhi

 

I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can’t find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

 

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

~ Henry David Thoreau

 

You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.

~ Zig Ziglar

 

I spend a lot of time reading.

~ Bill Gates

 

During my days of deepest grief, in all of my shock, sorrow and struggle, I sat at the feet of God. I literally spent hours each day reading God’s word, meditating on scripture and praying. I intentionally spent a significant amount of time being still before God.

~ Rick Warren

 

The best students come from homes where education is revered: where there are books, and children see their parents reading them.

~ Leo Buscaglia

 

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

~ Maya Angelou

 

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

~ Oscar Wilde

 

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

~ Taylor Swift

 

Some women have a weakness for shoes… I can go barefoot if necessary. I have a weakness for books.

~ Oprah Winfrey

 

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

~ Jane Austen