quotations about reading
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
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
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
Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
Much reading, like a too great repletion, stops up, through a course of diverse sometimes contrary opinions, the access of a nearer, newer, and quicker invention of your own.
LAUGHTON OSBORN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
CHARLES LAMB
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia
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
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
A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Long Fall
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
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
Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
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
We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
WALTER SCOTT
The Monastery
I will read anything rather than work.
JEAN KERR
introduction, Please Don't Eat the Daisies
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
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
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