READING QUOTES IV
quotations about reading
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
People read everything nowadays, except books.
MADAME SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, Discourse a clear Man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
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
I read my eyes out and can't read half enough.... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Abigail Adams, December 28, 1794
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
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
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
Learn to read slow; all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.
WILLIAM WALKER
Art of Reading
What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 74
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
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
The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014
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
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
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
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
attributed, The Miracle of Language