quotations about reading
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
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
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Regained
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
People read everything nowadays, except books.
MADAME SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
G. M. TREVELYAN
English Social History
Thou art the cause, O reader, of my dwelling on lighter topics, when I would rather handle serious ones.
MARTIAL
Epigrams
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWIN
Life Magazine, May 24, 1963
I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
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
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
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
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
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
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, June 18, 1711
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
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
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