quotations about reading
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
A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Long Fall
By reading a man does, as it were, antidate his life, and makes himself contemporary with past ages.
J. COLLIER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
attributed, The Miracle of Language
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
GROUCHO MARX
letter to S. J. Perelman
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Afterthoughts
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
SIR ARTHUR HELPS
Friends in Council
Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Citizen of the World
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
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
Read to live, not live to read.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Caxtons
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
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
Independent on Sunday, May 19, 1991
What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."
LILI TAYLOR
O Magazine, August 2006
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
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Boswell's Life of Johnson