READING QUOTES IV

quotations about reading

Reading quote

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

Tags: Tim Lebbon


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


Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

W. FUSSELLMAN

"Slogans for a Library", The Library, April 1926


The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

MALCOLM X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Tags: Malcolm X


Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Friends in Council

Tags: Arthur Helps


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

Tags: Jean Paul Sartre


Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

G. M. TREVELYAN

English Social History

Tags: G. M. Trevelyan


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


In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Citizen of the World

Tags: Oliver Goldsmith


Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote

Tags: Miguel de Cervantes


As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.

JOSEPH EPSTEIN

attributed, The Miracle of Language

Tags: Joseph Epstein


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


By reading a man does, as it were, antidate his life, and makes himself contemporary with past ages.

J. COLLIER

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

The History Boys

Tags: Arnold Bennett


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


Love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life which come to every one, for hours of delight.

MONTESQUIEU

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Montesquieu


Sound and healthy reading will develop and enkindle the soul, enlighten the mind, and vivify and direct the imagination.

LOUISE SWANTON BELLOC

attributed, Day's Collacon


Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanac

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


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

ANONYMOUS