READING QUOTES IV
quotations about reading
Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
People read everything nowadays, except books.
MADAME SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, June 18, 1711
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
GROUCHO MARX
letter to S. J. Perelman
But reading is not idleness ... it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
STEPHEN SPENDER
journal entry, January 4, 1980
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 74
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
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
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Afterthoughts
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
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
BEN HECHT
attributed, Jewish Wit and Wisdom
Learn to read slow; all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.
WILLIAM WALKER
Art of Reading
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
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
attributed, The Miracle of Language