READING QUOTES III
quotations about reading
Reading ... is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Universal History of Infamy
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 Fault in Our Stars
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Mlle de Chantepie, June 1857
Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
Too much reading and too much meditation may produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by the excess of the oil, whose office it is to feed it.
GEORGE SEATON BOWES
Illustrative Gatherings for Preachers and Teachers
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Boswell's Life of Johnson
Accurate reading on a wide range of subjects makes the scholar; careful selection of the better makes the saint.
JOHN OF SALISBURY
The Statesman's Book of John of Salisbury
There are some who say that sitting at home reading is the equivalent of travel, because the experiences described in the book are more or less the same as the experiences one might have on a voyage, and there are those who say that there is no substitute for venturing out into the world. My own opinion is that it is best to travel extensively but to read the entire time, hardly glancing up to look out of the window of the airplane, train, or hired camel.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Thou art the cause, O reader, of my dwelling on lighter topics, when I would rather handle serious ones.
MARTIAL
Epigrams
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
EDMUND BURKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWIN
Life Magazine, May 24, 1963
In reality, people read because they want to write. Anyway, reading is a sort of rewriting.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
interview, Les Ecrivains en Personne, 1959
Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.
BEN CARSON
Think Big
The danger of reading too much is that we shall have only the thoughts of others. The danger of reading too little or none at all, that we shall have none but our own.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.
C. S. LEWIS
"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014
A house without books is like a room without windows.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"The Duty of Owning Books", Manford's Magazine, Volume 30
I tend to believe that computers are drawing kids -- and adults -- away from reading purely because they provide an alternative, vast source of spare-time amusement and entertainment. I recently heard a frightening statistic: there are less than one million true readers in this country (those who read every day instead of one book per year on a beach). Terrifying.
TIM LEBBON
interview, Infinity Plus