READING QUOTES V

quotations about reading

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


If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Letters and Social Aims

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


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

Tags: Samuel Johnson


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


We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

THOMAS CARLYLE

Essays


People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

Afterthoughts

Tags: Logan Pearsall Smith


Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Friends in Council

Tags: Arthur Helps


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

Tags: Ben Hecht


I will read anything rather than work.

JEAN KERR

introduction, Please Don't Eat the Daisies

Tags: Jean Kerr


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

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


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


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


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

Tags: Cesare Pavese


I love to lose myself in other men's minds.

CHARLES LAMB

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia

Tags: Charles Lamb


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

Tags: David Mamet


By reading a man does, as it were, antidate his life, and makes himself contemporary with past ages.

J. COLLIER

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

Tags: Lili Taylor


A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

WALTER MOSLEY

The Long Fall

Tags: Walter Mosley


Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.

BEN CARSON

Think Big