READING QUOTES IV
quotations about reading
What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 74
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
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
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
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
EDMUND BURKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
ANONYMOUS
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
To read merely for reading's sake is almost as unprofitable as not reading at all. Setting out, in the first place with a clear idea of what we wish to learn, which is eminently important, we must afterwards, if we would realize what we have read, reperuse it in thought. This only makes it truly our own.
LEO HARTLEY GRINDON
Life: Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
attributed, The Miracle of Language
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
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
Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
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
Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.
PAUL AUSTER
The Brooklyn Follies
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
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Afterthoughts
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