quotations about reading
If we were more careful not to teach our children to read in their childhood we should not be so anxious about the effects of pernicious literature upon their adolescent morals.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
I will read anything rather than work.
JEAN KERR
introduction, Please Don't Eat the Daisies
When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly manner.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
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
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Decay of Lying
The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Mezzanine
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO
The Uses of Literature
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
CHARLES LAMB
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia
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
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Afterthoughts
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
Independent on Sunday, May 19, 1991
When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own--the place where we live--and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
WALTER SCOTT
The Monastery
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
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Miracle of Language
We read for instruction, for correction, and for consolation.
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
LADY W. M. MONTAGUE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The man who does not read ... has no advantage over the man who can't read.
MARK TWAIN
attributed, The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain
By reading we acquaint ourselves in a very extensive manner with the affairs, actions, and thoughts of the living and the dead, in the most remote nations and in the most distant ages; and that with as much ease as though they lived in our own age and nation.
ISAAC WATTS
The Improvement of the Mind
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.
NORA EPHRON
I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman