READING QUOTES VI

quotations about reading


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The best moments in reading are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

ALAN BENNETT
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The History Boys


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Tags: Arnold Bennett


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


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

ANONYMOUS


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


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


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


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

Tags: Fran Lebowitz


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

Tags: Cesare Pavese


And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.

WALTER SCOTT

The Monastery

Tags: Walter Scott


No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

LADY W. M. MONTAGUE

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

Tags: Ben Hecht


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

Tags: Jean de La Bruyère


People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

Afterthoughts

Tags: Logan Pearsall Smith


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

Tags: Mark Twain


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

Tags: Nicholson Baker


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

Tags: Walt Disney


We read for instruction, for correction, and for consolation.

QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

Tags: Nora Ephron


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