READING QUOTES III

quotations about reading

Reading quote

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

SAUL BELLOW

Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories

Tags: Saul Bellow


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


Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

VOLTAIRE

A Philosophical Dictionary

Tags: Voltaire


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

Tags: C. S. Lewis


People read everything nowadays, except books.

MADAME SWETCHINE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Madame Swetchine


While we read a novel, we are insane--bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


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


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


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


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


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


Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook F", Aphorisms

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


Reading ... is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

Universal History of Infamy

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


Some people read too much: the bibliobuli ... who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through the most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

H. L. MENCKEN

"Minority Report", Notebooks

Tags: H. L. Mencken


The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.

NEIL GAIMAN

"Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian, October 15, 2013

Tags: Neil Gaiman


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


If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

STEPHEN KING

On Writing

Tags: Stephen King


Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

ANONYMOUS


The danger of reading too much is that we shall have only the thoughts of others. The danger of reading too little or none at all, that we shall have none but our own.

LORD ACTON

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Lord Acton


Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Friends in Council

Tags: Arthur Helps