Top 1200 Good Book Quotes & Sayings

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They're solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

"The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good;" and without claiming for an instant that title of good for my book, I do not doubt that many a good book has remained unwritten, or, perhaps, being written, has remained unpublished, because there floated before the mind's eye of the author, or possible author, the ideal of a better or a best, which has put him out of all conceit with his good.

I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it.

If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.

Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward.

I cheat on my books a lot, which is not a good thing because it's good to stick with one book and get to the end of it, but I'm a book philanderer.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

A good book is a good book. End of story.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author.

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.

I picked up this book called Blue Mountain, supposed to be a really good book on the Civil War.

The right good book is always a book of travel; it is about a life's journey.

What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

That's one of the many things about having the bookstore that I adore. I can walk into the store and say to somebody, "I'm glad you're reading this book" or "I'm glad you're getting this book" or "Don't get that book. I read that book and hated that book. Let's get you this book instead."

If you're going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.

There's no such thing as a good book or a bad book. There's a book that matters to a reader.

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they're good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you'd want to talk to about a book. They hate it by that point; they've already moved on to a new lover. Besides, the author never knows what the book is about anyway.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.

Any book is a Good Book, and wherever they keep the Good Book safe is also the House a the Lord.

In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good.

A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.

O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.

You are only as good as your last book, and so there has to be a book.

I think a good book is a good book forever. I don't think they get less good because times change.

A bad book and good marketing won't work, the same way a good book and bad marketing will also not work. There is no choice in the matter that if you need to write a good book, you also need to have good marketing for it.

You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's - not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you - not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity - not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul - a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.

It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.

Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can’t provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.

No book, no matter how good, has a chance of reaching a large audience unless the publisher SEES the book's value.

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

I look upon every good man, as a good book, lent by its owner for another to read, and transcribe the excellent notions and golden passages that are in it for his own benefit, that they may return with him when the owner shall call for the book again: but in case this excellent book shall be thrown into a corner and no use made of it, it justly provokes the owner to take it away in displeasure. --Funeral of John Upton, Esq

Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.

What a person loves at 20 may seem stupid at 35. That doesn't mean the book was stupid, it means that the time when it spoke to the reader is past. So . . . I'm cautious about rereading favorite books. I hate to spoil the good feelings they created. Keeping the good feelings is more important than rereading the book. Moving on is a good thing.

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.

Reading a book about management isnt going to make you a good manager any more than a book about guitar will make you a good guitarist, but it can get you thinking about the most important concepts.

My books have been part of my life forever. They have been good soldiers, boon companions. Every book has survived numerous purges over the years; each book has repeatedly been called onto the carpet and asked to explain itself. I own no book that has not fought the good fight, taken on all comers, and earned the right to remain. If a book is there, it is there for a reason.

I remember going over proofs of this book - my first book - back in 2001, in a bar in Toronto called the 'Victory Cafe', and thinking sadly to myself, 'This is a very good manuscript but not a very good book.' I don't know what I meant by that, but I was pretty heartbroken and sure it was true.

I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

I really believe that the movie will never be as good as the book, both because the book goes on longer - a movie is basically an abridgment of a book - and because books are internal. But they are incredibly powerful. The visual format is, you know, amazing.

I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.

I like westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels, thrillers, and I try to avoid the word 'genre' altogether. A good book is a good book.

No one ever knows if a book is good until they read the book.

Life is like a book son. And every book has an end. No matter how much you like that book you will get to the last page and it will end. No book is complete without its end. And once you get there, only when you read the last words, will you see how good the book is.

Only bad books have good endings. If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.

Too many writers think that all you need to do is write well-but that's only part of what a good book is. Above all, a good book tells a good story. Focus on the story first. Ask yourself, 'Will other people find this story so interesting that they will tell others about it?' Remember: A bestselling book usually follows a simple rule, 'It's a wonderful story, wonderfully told'; not, 'It's a wonderfully told story.'

Reading a book about management isn't going to make you a good manager any more than a book about guitar will make you a good guitarist, but it can get you thinking about the most important concepts.

You take a book, and what can you do with a book? Can you cook an egg on a book? No. Can you dig a hole? No. Is it a good weapon? No. The fact that it's good for nothing kind of makes it almost all-important.

We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits--so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth-- 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

A great book is a homing device For navigating paradise. A good book somehow makes you care About the comfort of a chair. A bad book owes to many trees A forest of apologies.

One of the joys of a really good book is that you're so into the world of the book, you forget what you're looking at is words on a page.