READING QUOTES V

quotations about reading

Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls.

THOMAS CARLYLE

On Heroes, Hero-worship, & the Heroic in History: Six Lectures


Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

ANONYMOUS


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

Tags: Daniel Handler


Read to live, not live to read.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The Caxtons

Tags: Edward Bulwer Lytton


Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

JOHN LOCKE

A Treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding

Tags: John Locke


If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Letters and Social Aims

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


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

Tags: C. S. Lewis


One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.

DAVID MAMET

True and False

Tags: David Mamet


A book is a gift you can open again and again.

GARRISON KEILLOR

attributed, The Miracle of Language

Tags: Garrison Keillor


The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Autobiography

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


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

Tags: John Green


What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."

LILI TAYLOR

O Magazine, August 2006

Tags: Lili Taylor


You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, Book Savvy

Tags: Ray Bradbury


A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.

ROBERT ELDRIDGE ARIS WILLMOTT

Pleasures, Objects and Advantages of Literature


We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

THOMAS CARLYLE

Essays


To read is to enter an intercourse with a text.

VARUN BEGLEY

"The Unbearable Freud"


Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.

JOHANNES KEPLER

attributed, The Martyrs of Science


A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

WALTER MOSLEY

The Long Fall

Tags: Walter Mosley


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

Tags: Arthur Schopenhauer