READING QUOTES IV

quotations about reading

Reading quote

Too much reading and too much meditation may produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by the excess of the oil, whose office it is to feed it.

GEORGE SEATON BOWES

Illustrative Gatherings for Preachers and Teachers


You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

JAMES BALDWIN

Life Magazine, May 24, 1963

Tags: James Baldwin


Learn to read slow; all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.

WILLIAM WALKER

Art of Reading


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


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


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


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


Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Friends in Council

Tags: Arthur Helps


Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

W. FUSSELLMAN

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


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

JOSEPH EPSTEIN

attributed, The Miracle of Language

Tags: Joseph Epstein


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


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


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


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

J. COLLIER

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


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


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


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


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

GARRISON KEILLOR

attributed, The Miracle of Language

Tags: Garrison Keillor


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