Great Book Quotes

• A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

  Robertson Davies

  Morning, Reading, Book

  33 Copy quote

• A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.

  Edward P. Morgan

  Inspirational, Book, Reading

  Edward P. Morgan (1963). “Clearing the air”, Washington, D.C.

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

  Dr. Seuss

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  235 Copy quote

• To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

  Victor Hugo

  Book, Reading, Healing

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

  Joseph Joubert

  Book, Men, Religion

  7 Copy quote

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

  B. F. Skinner

  Inspiring, Education, Book

  "B. F. Skinner: The Man and His Ideas". Book by Richard Isadore Evans, p. 73, 1968.

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

  Pablo Neruda

  Inspirational, Beauty, Book

  56 Copy quote

• The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.

  Theodore Parker

  Book, Thinking, Make You Think

  "The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Lessons from the world of matter and the world of man".

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.

  Arnold Bennett

  Children, Book, Writing

  7 Copy quote
• 

  Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.

  John Green

  Book, Reading, Understanding

  73 Copy quote

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

  Joseph Brodsky

  Education, Reading, Book

  "The Balancing Act: Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership". Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan, 1996.

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are great books in this world and great worlds in books.

  Anne Bronte

  Book, World, This World

  16 Copy quote

• They say nobody has the attention span to read great books early in life. If I start to read something good, I'll look and it's 86 pages already. Attention span. What are they talking about? If it's good, it'll drag you in.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Attention

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose.

  Matthew Specktor

  Book, Nothing To Lose, Written

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Wars is a great book, rich in its images, its language, its construction, and, ultimately, its conception.

  Guy Vanderhaeghe

  War, Book, Language

  4 Copy quote

• Meditation has been really helpful for me and music and great books. Deep down, it's just that I feel a connection to music and books when I can find that other people have gone through similar things.

  Mason Jennings

  Book, People, Meditation

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.

  James Franco

  Art, Book, Responsibility

  "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: James Franco and Pamela Romanowsky on Drugs, S&M, and The Adderall Diaries". Interview with Emily Zemler, www.esquire.com. April 13, 2016.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Writing, Ambition

  "White knuckle ride". The Guardian interview, www.theguardian.com. December 11, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.

  Edward Abbey

  Life, Business, Book

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Men

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Anita Brookner

  Life, Reading, Book

  8 Copy quote

• She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.

  Deb Caletti

  Girl, Book, Clothes

  Deb Caletti (2013). “The Story of Us”, p.299, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Life Changing, Book, Heart

  Siri Hustvedt (2012). “Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays”, p.63, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Book readers are special people, and they will always turn to books as the ultimate pleasure. Those who do not read are the unfortunate ones. There's nothing wrong with them; but they are missing out on one of life's compensations and rewards. A great book is a friend that never lets you down. You can return to it again and again and the joy first derived from it will still be there.

  Ruskin Bond

  Book, Special People, Joy

  Ruskin Bond (2014). “Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: A Ruskin Bond Treasury”, p.213, Penguin UK

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Time, Moving, Book

  8 Copy quote