Quotes about reading
page 3

“Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Part 1, Chapter 23.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”

Carol Shields (1935–2003) American author

Source: The Republic of Love

Books

“So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn't received and that might have been eaten by gargoyles.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

“Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”

Virginia Woolf book Monday or Tuesday

Source: Monday or Tuesday

“Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open so we are not fooled by the signs indicating that the End Times are near. As we get closer to the End Times, many people are going to claim to be the Messiah and claim to have the answers for a troubled world. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us to expect a period of ceaseless, unending, terrible war. It appears that we are already preparing for this time as fifty percent of all research scientists today are involved in arms development and there is at least one military weapon and four thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman, and child on earth. Finally, there will be more and more disease and devastation. Today, as you read this, millions of people in the world are being afflicted by insufficient food, the spread of new diseases, and the devastating effects of natural disasters. As we get closer to the End Times, there will be more and more famine. There will also be an increase in earthquakes and natural disasters. Christ also spoke of pestilence: the spread of new diseases. Our world will experience a spate of tragic new diseases that we will be unable to control.”

David Jeremiah

Source: The Prophecy Answer Book

War, People, Books, World

“Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person…. Reading is bliss.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Feeling, Learning, Personality

“Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul.”

Joanne Harris (1964) British author

Books, Soul, Heart

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Books, Faith

“Warning: Do not read this story right after eating. In fact, don't read it right before eating either. In fact, just to be safe, don't read this story if you're ever planning to eat again.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Source: Wayside School Is Falling Down

“There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Love, People, Books, Music

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Books

“Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

“A book is not completed till it's read.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Books

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Books, Study

“Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

“There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Way

“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.”

Sharon Creech (1945) American writer of children's novels

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, People, Books

“The polite thing would be to go back inside, give you privacy when you read it. But, I’m just not that mature.'
'It’s nothing. Fine.' Feeling foolish, Laurel opened the envelope.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Savor the Moment

Feeling

“Reading is my passion and my escape since I was 5 years old. Overall, children don't realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Children, Passion

“In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Light

“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker

People, Way, Feeling

“All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Learning

“Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Coffee, Light

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Variant: I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Love, Fear

“I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Pleasure, Beauty, Soul, Imagination

“When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“He does not always remain bent over the
pages; he often leans back and closes
his eyes over a line he has been reading
again, and its meaning spreads through
his blood.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“If you want to know a country, read its writers.”

Aminatta Forna (1964) Aminatta Forna, British author of ''The Devil that Danced on the Water'', ''Ancestor Stones'' and ''The Memory o…

Country

“I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

“I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I'm trying to give a little of it back to others. It's one of the greatest pleasures I know.”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

People, Pleasure, Thinking

“At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how holily we have lived.”
Certe adveniente die judicii, non quæretur a nobis quid legimus, sed quid fecimus; nec quam bene diximus, sed quam religiose viximus.

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Book I, ch. 3; this is part of a longer passage:
A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences. Yet learning itself is not to be blamed, or is the simple knowledge of anything whatsoever to be despised, for true learning is good in itself and ordained by God; but a good conscience and a holy life are always to be preferred. But because many are more eager to acquire much learning than to live well, they often go astray, and bear little or no fruit. If only such people were as diligent in the uprooting of vices and the panting of virtues as they are in the debating of problems, there would not be so many evils and scandals among the people, nor such laxity in communities. At the Day of Judgement, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but how holily we have lived. Tell me, where are now all those Masters and Doctors whom you knew so well in their lifetime in the full flower of their learning? Other men now sit in their seats, and they are hardly ever called to mind. In their lifetime they seemed of great account, but now no one speaks of them.
[Humili tui cognitio, certior viam est ad Deum, quam profunda scientiae inquisitio. Non est culpanda scientia, aut quelibet simplex rei notitia, quae bona est in se considerata, et a Deo ordinat: sed preferenda est semper bona conscientia, et virtuosa vita. Quia vero plures magis student scire, quam bene vivere: ideo saepe errant, et pene nullum, vel modicum fructum ferunt. O si tanta adhiberent diligentiam ad extirpanda vitia, et virtute inferendas, sicuti ad movenda questiones: non fierent tanta mala et scandala in populo nec tanta dissolutio in cenobiis ! Certe, adveniente die judicii, non quaeretur a nobis: quid legimus, sed quid fecimus: nec quam bene diximus, sed quam religiose viximus. Dic mihi: Ubi sunt modo omnes illi Domini et Magistri, quos bene novisti, dum adhuc viverent et studiis florerent? Iam eorum praebendas alii possident: et nescio, utrum de eis recogitent. In vita sua aliquid esse videbantur, et modo de illis tacetur.]
Book I, ch. 3.
Source: The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Books, Housing

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Books, Personality

“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Housing

“Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Pleasure, Sadness, Question, Knowledge

“The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Way

“He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.”

Tom Perrotta (1961) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Joe College

Books, Thinking

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. Fopr the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, unitl the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Children, People, Books, Faith

“You are what you read”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Life, Books, Way, Parting

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Books, Motivation, Funny

“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Books

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, God, War, People

“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Truth, History

“This week I've been reading a lot and doing little work. That's the way things ought to be. That's surely the road to success.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Way, Success

“Choosing not to read is like closing an open door to paradise”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey

Books

“To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Death, Nature

“I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Love, Books

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sad, Life, Hostility, Secret

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Books

“Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.”

Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts

Source: Between the Acts

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man

Literature

“Remember, young man, experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher. By reading about the lives of great people, you can unlock the secrets to what made them great.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

People, Secret, Teachers

“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

Feeling

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Books, World, History

“Pay attention to what's happening around you. Read the book before you see the movie. Remember, though you, alone, are responsible for your own happiness, its still okay to feel responsible for someone else's. Liveto learn.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

Books, Feeling, Learning, Happiness

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Books, Music, Country

“You're either reading a book or you're not.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

Books

“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Books, Way

“Read day and night, devour books — these sleeping pills — not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: Tears and Saints (1937)

Books, Way, History, Sleep

“Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: Selected Letters

Thinking

“You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

History, Science

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Meditations in an Emergency

Beauty, Appearance

“I sit, I read, I listen to music, I go or a walk, I ride to Prospect Park and sit under the Willow Tree, I remember, I forget, I look at pictures, I do, I do, I do… or I don't, but its peaceful… only me… no worries.”

Hubert Selby Jr. (1928–2004) American writer

Peace, Music, Tree, Forgetting

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Girl, Boy

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Misattributed

Books

“The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

People, Personality, Madness

“Tris: "I was reading."
Sandry: "You're always reading. The only way people can ever talk to you is to interrupt."
Tris: "Then maybe they shouldn't talk to me.”

Tamora Pierce Briar's Book

Source: Briar's Book

People, Way

“That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it.”

Christopher Morley book The Haunted Bookshop

Source: The Haunted Bookshop

Books, Way

“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

For Father, Love

“anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Variant: But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.
Source: Jacob's Room

Mood

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”

Saul Bellow book Ravelstein

Source: Ravelstein

People, Books, Learning, Happiness

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Heart

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

Men, Books

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

Love, Hate, Books

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Books, Thinking

“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader ("Good Readers and Good Writers", p. 3).”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lectures on Literature

Source: Lectures on Literature (1980)

Books

“When reading a book, be very certain that you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Books, Understanding, Study, Learning

“There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.”

Christopher Morley book The Haunted Bookshop

Source: The Haunted Bookshop

Books

“Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

As quoted in Notes for a Memoir : On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing (2006) by Janet Jeppson Asimov, p. 58
General sources
Variant: Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
Context: If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

“Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women