Quotes about reading (4771 quotes, page 34)

“kummel and have deep conversations about Plato and Kant while listening to classical music. Or she would spend the entire morning in the bathtub, with bubble-bath up to her chin, reading Proust. If you wanted to talk to her you had to do it in the bathroom.”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

Joan's idea of a good time was to go to Child's at 110th Street and Broadway and sip
About

Music

“Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

As quoted in Weird Sex and Snowshoes : And Other Canadian Film Phenomena (2001) by Katherine Monk, p. 150

People , Books , Justice , Problem

“I meet people who tell me things like, ‘I read your book in two days’. Please don’t do that. These things take me years to write. Slow down. Everything you read, slow down. Reading is our great act of resistance in this age of speed and carelessness.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

People , Books , Age , Speed

“Less smoking and more reading.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

23rd April 2005.
As President, 2005

“Personally, then I have no reason to lash out at the education system. Quite the contrary. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, convince me that our education system is big waste of time and money. Almost every politician vows to spend more on education. As an insider, I can't help gasping, "Why? You want to waste even more?"”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

[The Case against Education, 1, https://books.google.com/books?id=Mws8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1]
The Case against Education (2018)

Money , Education , Time , Help

“At the dawn of a worldwide religious war that Americans prefer to name a war against terror, I feel myself drawn to Islam, drawn to read the Koran, even to kiss the Koran—melodramatically, but sincerely—as I did one evening recently in front of a university audience. I meant to honor Islam. I meant to convey that, as a Christian, I consider myself a loving brother to the Muslim, as I am to the Jew, by the favor of Father Abraham.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Love , War , Feeling , Kiss

“Yes, Dad was considered a "boat rocker," and he was prepared to make waves when necessary. He felt that if you needed to create a tsunami to make things right, then so be it. Sure, he cared about what people thought of him, he cared about them very much… but he cared about the Bible more. The Word of God was the foundation of his life. It was the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins. He never ceased to read it, contemplate it, apply it, and defend it.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Raising Godly Children in an Ungodly World: Leaving a Lasting Legacy (2008)

Life , God , People

“I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and — if he is lucky enough — know the love of an honest woman.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Lecture at Oxford as quoted in Time (15 December 1961).
General sources

Love , Travel , Passion

“Take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (25 October 1879 )
Letters, etc

“I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His Day is marching on.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

All versions.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861)

“I have tried, in this book, to do three things. I try first to bring a greater awareness of the way in which the differences and the similarities in the bodies of human beings are the basis on which all our learnings about our sex, and our relationship to the other sex, are built. Talking about our bodies is a complex and difficult matter. We are so used to covering them up, to referring to them obliquely with slang terms or in a borrowed language to hiding even infants' sex membership under blue and pink ribbons. It is difficult to become aware of those things about us which have been, and will always be, patterned by our own particular modesties and reticences. We reject, and very rightly, catalogues of caresses arranged in frequency tables, or accounts of childhood that read like a hospital chart…”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 4-5

Books , Sex , Way , Learning

“That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Preface
Lacon (1820)

Success

“A few weeks ago I read, in Sacheverell Sitwell, two impressives sentences: “It is my belief that I have informed myself of nearly all works of art in the known world…. I have heard most of the music of the world, and seen nearly all the paintings.” It was hard for me to believe these sentences, but I wanted Sitwell to be able to say them, liked him for having said them—I believed.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 71
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

World , Art , Music , Painting

“He sent me a letter from India, where I think he got a fellowship to spend a year or so. He sent me a letter that read, I've just met a wonderful guru who can read minds. "I want you to" — Allen had a way of saying "I want you to do this, I want you to do that" — "I want you to get him a position in the Philosophy Department." I wrote back, "Dear Allen, the members of the Philosophy Department want nothing so little as to have their minds read."”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

On Allen Ginsberg, in "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Jacques Barzun, Idea Man" http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=78886, interview with Roger Gathman, The Austin Chronicle (2000-10-13)

Way , Thinking

“Some time ago a tailor in Chicago was conducting a vigorous advertising campaign. I did not suppose that his advertising was having any influence upon me. Some months after the advertising had begun I went into the tailor's shop and ordered a suit. While in the shop I happened to fall into conversation with the proprietor and he asked me if a friend had recommended him to me. I replied that such was the case. Thereupon I tried to recall who the friend was and finally came to the conclusion that this shop had never been recommended to me at all. I had seen his advertisements for months and from them had formed an idea of the shop. Later, I forgot where I had received my information and assumed that I had received it from a friend who patronized the shop. I discovered that all I knew of the shop I had learned from advertisements and I doubt very much whether I ever read any of the advertisements further than the display type. Doubtless many other customers would have given the same reply even though, as in my case, no friend had spoken to them concerning the shop.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice, 1908, p. 176

Idea , Learning , Time

“I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.”

Gao Xingjian book Soul Mountain

Source: Soul Mountain (1989), ch. 12, p. 69

Books , Waiting

“I think perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to read aloud Gibbon to me in the evenings, because if it’s nice and hot by the fire, there’s something about Gibbon that does, rather, make you go to sleep.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

A Murder is Announced (1950)

Idea , Thinking , Sleep

“I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

Life , Books , Home , History

“The logic and necessity of the new generation — and what they are so furiously opposed to — must be seen against a background of what has gone wrong in America. It must be understood in light of the betrayal and loss of the American dream, the rise of the Corporate State of the 1960's, and the way in which that State dominates, exploits, and ultimately destroys both nature and man. Its rationality must be measured against the insanity of existing "reason" — reason that makes impoverishment, dehumanization, and even war appear to be logical and necessary. Its logic must be read from the fact that Americans have lost control of the machinery of their society, and only new values and a new culture can restore control. Its emotions and spirit can be comprehended only by seeing contemporary America through the eyes of the new generation.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter I : The Coming American Revolution, p. 5

War , Dreams , Way , Nature

“When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?"”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Notice a pattern here?
Column, September 14, 2006, "Dems Vs. Wal-mart" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will091406.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s

Books

“My first contact with game theory was a popular article in Fortune Magazine which I read in my last high school year. I was immediately attracted to the subject matter and when I studied mathematics I found the fundamental book by von Neumann and Morgenstern in the library and studied it.”

Reinhard Selten (1930–2016) German economist

"Reinhard Selten - Biographical," 1994

Books , School , Game , Mathematics

“Schnabel said that Beethoven's late piano sonatas are music better than could be played. Larkin's best poems are poetry better than can be said, but sayability they sumptuously offer. Larkin demands to be read aloud. His big, intricately formed stanzas, often bridging from one to the next, defeat the single breath but always invite it. As you read, the ideal human voice speaks in your head. It isn't his: as his gramophone records prove, he sounded like someone who expects to be interrupted. It isn't yours, either. It's ours.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Philip Larkin: Somewhere becoming rain'
Essays and reviews, The Dreaming Swimmer (1993)

Music

“The Author to the Reader
I’ve read that Luther said (it’s come to me
So often that I’ve made it into meter):
And even if the world should end tomorrow
I still would plant my little apple-tree.
Here, reader, is my little apple-tree.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

epigraph, p. vi
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

World , Tree

“Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"August 17th" from Scorpio, Bad Spider, Die: The Horoscope Poems
Words for Dr. Y (1978)

“I've just read that I'm dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Letter to a magazine that had mistakenly published the announcement of his death.
Quoted by: Ashwin Sanghi, 13 STEPS TO BLOODY GOOD LUCK https://books.google.nl/books?id=MYU2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PT94&lpg=PT94&dq=rudyard+kipling+%22read+that+I%27m+dead%22&source=bl&ots=hd9xVJsJRN&sig=9Cd4oIYC1gLU-VufOCjVL3z4YDc&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKvIKa1qzMAhUBuBoKHbftAo4Q6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=rudyard%20kipling%20%22read%20that%20I'm%20dead%22&f=false, westland ltd, 2014

Dead , Forgetting

“Pity those—adventurers, adolescents, authors of young adult fiction—who make their way in the borderland between worlds. It is at worst an invisible and at best an inhospitable place. Build your literary house on the borderlands, as the English writer Philip Pullman has done, and you may find that your work is recommended by booksellers, as a stopgap between installments of Harry Potter, to children who cannot (one hopes) fully appreciate it, and to adults, disdainful or baffled, who 'don't read fantasy.' Yet all mystery resides there, in the margins, between life and death, childhood and adulthood, Newtonian and quantum, 'serious' and 'genre' literature. And it is from the confrontation with mystery that the truest stories have always drawn their power.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Dust & Daemons, The New York Review of Books (March 25, 2004)

Life , Death , Children , World

“For the man who considers himself the best critic generally studies sound and unsound composition with equal interest, being no more greedy for lofty utterances to praise than for contemptible ones to ridicule. In this way technique, grandeur, and propriety in the use of the Latin language are particularly underrated by the armchair critics, who, with an insensibility which goes hand in hand with scurrility, and wishing to read only what they may criticize, cannot, by their very abuse of literature, be making a proper use of it.”
Nam qui maxume doctus sibi videtur, dictionem sanam et insanam ferme appetitu pari revolvit, non amplius concupiscens erecta quae laudet quam despecta quae rideat. atque in hunc modum scientia pompa proprietas linguae Latinae iudiciis otiosorum maximo spretui est, quorum scurrilitati neglegentia comes hoc volens tantum legere, quod carpat, sic non utitur litteris, quod abutitur.

Sidonius Apollinaris (430–489) Gaulish poet, aristocrat and bishop

Lib. 3, Ep. 14, sect. 2; vol. 2, p. 59.
Epistularum

Way , Literature , Study

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?”

C. P. Snow book The Two Cultures

Source: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), Pp. 15-16

People , Education , Law , Time

“There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

71
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men , People , Books , World

“The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to Thomas Allsop (30 March 1820)
Letters

Age , Feeling , Drink , Effort

“Every woman is worth more when she learns to read.”

Ramon Llull (1232–1316) Majorcan writer and philosopher

Llull cited in: Lucie Hayes (2009) Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Barcelona. p. 47

Learning

“Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment—"Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!"”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Pleasure , Books , World , Feeling

“Several dozen journals now exist that print only verse. They don't publish literary reviews, just page after page of freshly minted poems. The heart sinks to see so many poems crammed so tightly together, like downcast immigrants in steerage. One can easily miss a radiant poem amid the many lackluster ones. It takes tremendous effort to read these small magazines with openness and attention. Few people bother, generally not even the magazines' contributors. The indifference to poetry in the mass media has created a monster of the opposite kind — journals that love poetry not wisely but too well.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Love , People , Effort , Heart

“And those three sisters, three little sisters,
They stayed home and read their magazines,
And you can tell it to the army, tell it to the navy,
And tell it to the marines.”

Vic Mizzy (1916–2009) American composer

Song, Three Little Sisters.

Home , Sister

“It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Translator As Reader, p. 273-274.
A History of Reading (1996)

Wealth

“With spots of sunny openings, and with nooks
To lie and read in, sloping into brooks.”

Leigh Hunt The Story of Rimini

The Story of Rimini

Lie

“This Library afforded me the Means of Improvement by constant Study, for which I set apart an Hour or two each Day; and thus repair'd in some Degree the Loss of the Learned Education my Father once intended for me. Reading was the only Amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no time in Taverns, Games, or Frolics of any kind. And my Industry in my Business continu'd as indefatigable as it was necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Part II, p. 64.
The Autobiography (1818)

Education , Game , Business , Study

“Unique descriptions of scene play a significant role in the success of fiction, and any first-rate novelists knows enough to keep changing the scenes in which his characters carry out action, since that no only conceals the novelist's shortcomings, but also heightens the reader's enthuisiasm in the reading process”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter 10, Section 2

Change , Success

“Here's a tip I've never used: I understand you can learn a great deal of girldom by reading Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little not inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love , Books , Girl , Understanding

“I do not mind if my cottage is rather small
So long as there's room enough for bed and mat.
Often and often the neighbours come to see me
And with brave words discuss the things of old.
Rare writings we read together and praise:
Doubtful meanings we examine together and settle.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

"Moving house" (translation by A. Waley)

“If out of reading this book you get just one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle—if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 63

People , Books , Thinking

“The title No Logo is not meant to be read as a literal slogan (as in No More Logos!), or a post-logo logo (there is already a No Logo clothing line, or so I'm told). Rather, it is an attempt to capture an Anticorporate attitude I see emerging among many young activists. This book is hinged on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Introduction, "A Web of Brands"
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

People , Secret , Books , Clothes

“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.”

Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) British conductor and impresario

Quoted by H. Proctor-Gregg, Beecham Remembered (1976), p. 154

Music

“You don't know what I'm all about / Like killing cops and reading Kerouac”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Boxcar"
24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1993)

“We are told that we have to accept the Treaty of Rome. I have read the Treaty of Rome pretty carefully, and it expresses an outlook entirely different from our own. It may be that I am insular, but I value our Parliamentary outlook, an outlook which has extended throughout the Commonwealth. That is not the same position that holds on the Continent of Europe. No one of these principal countries in the Common Market has been very successful in running Parliamentary institutions: Germany, hardly any experience; Italy, very little; France, a swing between a dictatorship and more or less anarchic Parliament, and not very successfully. As I read the Treaty of Rome, the whole position means that we shall enter a federation which is composed in an entirely different way. I do not say it is the wrong way. But it is not our way. In this set-up it is the official who really puts up all the proposals; the whole of the planning is done by officials. It seems to me that the Ministers come in at a later stage—and if there is anything like a Federal Parliament, at a later stage still. I do not think that that is the way this country has developed, or wishes to develop. I am all for working in with our Continental friends. I was one of those who worked to build up NATO; I have worked for European integration. But that is a very different thing from bringing us into a close association which, I may say, is not one for defence, or even just for foreign policy. The fact is that if the designs behind the Common Market are carried out, we are bound to be affected in every phase of our national life. There would be no national planning, except under the guidance of Continental planning—we shall not be able to deal with our own problems; we shall not be able to build up the country in the way we want to do, so far as I can see. I think we shall be subject to overall control and planning by others. That is my objection.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/nov/08/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (8 November 1962).
1960s

Life , Way , Problem , Thinking

“Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

The News.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

People , Tear , Cry

“Friends always say, "How can you eat those? I read in the paper that they're made from hog's lips."
"And…?"
"And hearts and eyelids."”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Heart

“You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life, so I need to tell you that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

The Rush Limbaugh Show
2003-10-10, quoted in * 2004-02-15
Taking on Rush
Frank
Cerabino
The Palm Beach Post
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/news/limbaugh/021504_limbaugh.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040624220725/http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/news/limbaugh/021504_limbaugh.html
2004-06-24

Life , Pain , Parting

“These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter Four.

Way

“I wasn't strong enough to withstand such strong opinions. I keep them in a trunk and, from time to time, will read one from long ago.”

Sian Phillips

On not reading reviews of her acting.
Evening Standard, Thu 5 Jan 2012, p. 16

Strong , Time

“I'm not this crazy drunk guy you see on 'SuperGroup'. I like to be mellow sometimes. I like to read a lot, and I'm actually starting to write my first book. I have read so many books and now I'm trying to document this specific tour, because it is fascinating!”

Sebastian Bach (1968) Canadian singer

Chico Enterprise Record http://www.chicoer.com/buzz/ci_4825293 (December 12, 2006)

Books , Guy

“Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over New York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says,'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

Unsourced

Feeling , Home

“It was not until the ant and Veig had passed each other that Niall realized that he had been reading the ant's mind. It was a sensation like actually being the ant, as if he had momentarily taken possession of its body. And while he had been inside the ant's body, he had also become aware of all the other ants in the nest. It was a bewildering feeling, as if his mind had shattered into thousands of fragments, yet each fragment remained a coherent part of the whole.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Spider World: The Desert (1987), p. 57

Feeling , Parting

“Rowling got millions of young people reading, who grew up to be consumers who branched out into other authors and genres. You shouldn’t yell at her. You should thank her.”

Larry Correia (1977) American fantasy writer

"How Authors Get Paid, part 2", Monster Hunter Nation http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/25/how-authors-get-paid-part-2/, 2015-06-15

People

“No Chavez speech I have read or heard approaches the rhetorical brilliance of the Protestant ministers of the black civil rights”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

“So when the 1960's came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote is describing his departure from Abstract Expressionism
1961 - 1980
Source: 'It's About Freedom' - as quoted in 'It's About Freedom, Philip Guston's Late Works in the Schirn'; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 11/6/2013 – 2/2/2014 http://db-artmag.com/en/78/on-view/its-about-freedom-philip-gustons-late-works-in-the-schirn/

War , World , Feeling , Home

“Do you know what I think of history? … For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so… No one'll ever know everything about Jack. But … history made Jack what he was … this lonely, little sick boy … scarlet fever … this little boy sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history … reading the Knights of the Round Table … and he just liked that last song.
Then I thought, for Jack history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way, if it made him see the heroes, maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad … He was such a simple man. But he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side… his friends were all his old friends; he loved his Irish Mafia.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love , Men , Way , History

“I wrote A Wrinkle in Time when we were living in a small dairy farm village in New England. I had three small children to raise, and life was not easy. We lost four of our closest friends within two years by death — that's a lot of death statistically. And I really wasn't finding the answers to my big questions in the logical places. So, at the time I discovered the world of particle physics. I discovered Einstein and relativity. I read a book of Einstein's, in which he said that anyone who's not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burnt-out candle. And I thought, "Oh, I've found my theologian, what a wonderful thing."”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)

Life , Death , Children , Books

“Our government should consider the internet as the most crucial matter. There should be wireless access to the internet all over Turkey and all kinds of restrictions on the internet should be abolished. Everyone should be able to log on to internet whenever they like. Putting a restriction on internet is something like putting a lock on a book and saying ; “you cannot read!””

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

23 April 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

Books

“This isn't a diet book. In fact, you may gain 30 pounds just reading it.”

Morgan Murphy (food critic) (1972) Southern writer

Source: <i>Off the Eaten Path: Second Helpings</i> (2013), p. 7

Books

“You who are reading this are at least partially awake. You are a cut above Joe and Jill Sixpack. So I say to you: think about what you are doing with your life. Think about the responsibility you have to your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Think about the responsibility you have to all of those who came before you and whose sacrifices made your life possible. And think about your responsibility to yourself, your responsibility to be the best person, the most righteous person, that you can be. Think about all of these things, and then let me hear from you.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

- Time To Do What's Right, 1997
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 224]

Life , Children , Thinking , Personality

“So I read about various aspects of vegetarianism—the scientific aspect, the humane aspect, the ethical aspect, and the economic aspect. The more I studied, the more convinced I became that it was a logical procedure, that it would help humanity, that it would lessen the suffering of the animals, and that it would help this country.”

Gordon Latto (doctor) (1911–1998)

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), p. 123.

Study , Suffering , Help , Animals

“All this takes many clumsy and inexact word-descriptions to describe, but if we read paintings like we read books, it would not be such a hidden language for painting can effortlessly produce such elegant solutions.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Books , Painting

“When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

"One of his most famous and most quoted remarks. First printed in the Boston Globe, June 16, 1930, after he had attended Tremont Temple Baptist Church, where Dr. James W. Brougher was minister. He asked Will to say a few words after the sermon. The papers were quick to pick up the remark, and it stayed with him the rest of his life. He also said it on various other occasions" ~ Paula McSpadden Love 
Variant: I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one I didn't like.
John D. [Rockefeller] sure carried out my old saying, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Nationally syndicated column number 219, Rogers Gets Six Shiny Dimes From Oil King (1927).
The earliest dated citation of such a remark thus far found in research for Wikiquote is the one from 1926 about Leon Trotsky from the Saturday Evening Post (6 November 1926).
The Will Rogers Book (1972)

Time , Waiting

“People don't get their morality from their reading matter: they bring their morality to it.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

People

“Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 863

God , People , Books , Understanding

“The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

The Storm Over the University (December 6, 1990)

Way , History , Understanding , Knowledge

“Many creationists say that it is impossible to understand or believe the Bible unless it is read “in the spirit of the holy ghost”. In other words, you must already assume its truth before you read it, and you have to read it through filters of faith because it certainly isn’t compelling on its own without those blinders on. If it doesn’t make sense, then you’ve got to convince yourself that you must not understand it properly, and you’ve just got to try to make yourself believe it anyway somehow. That is precisely why creationist faith is deemed ‘dogmatic’. But that’s also proof by admission that even a literal reading must be “interpreted.””

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

So its very design is such that the Bible can not be either inerrant or “absolute truth”.
"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Truth , Faith , Understanding , Sense

“Nevertheless. among all the temptations I will have to resist today. There would be the temptation of memory: to recount what was for me. and for those of my generation who shared it during a whole lifetime. The experience of Marxism. The quasi-paternal figure of Marx, the way it fought in us with other filiations, the reading of texts and the interpretation of a world in which the Marxist inheritance was-and still remains, and so it will remain-absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist in order to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that still bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

World , Way , Fashion , Memory

“An alert copyreader on a newspaper couldn’t believe it when he read a reporter’s account of the theft of 2025 pigs. That’s a lot of pigs, he thought, and called the farmer to check the copy. “Is it true that you lost 2025 pigs?” he asked. “Yeth,” lisped the farmer. “Thanks,” returned the copyreader, and corrected the story to read “two sows and 25 pigs.””

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Humorous English (1961), p213

“You don't know what I'm up against. Because it's full of, of, of things that are only correct because they're grammatical, but they're tough on the ear, you see. This is a very wearying one. It's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. "Because Findus freeze the cod at sea, and then add a crumb-crisp" Ooh, "crumb-crisp coating." Ahh, that's tough, "crumb-crisp coating." I think, no, because of the way it's written, you need to break it up, because it's not, it's not as conversationally written.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

Way , Thinking , Sea

“Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes!) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

Suffering , Housing , Clothes

“Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.”

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

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Understanding

“It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country but didn't know the language, but had read enough and had a passionate interest, and was eager to live there, I wanted to live in this land; I had to live there, and master the language. [reacting on Pollock's 'Black and White' paintings show in 1951; Frankenthaler saw his painting art then for the first time in her life]”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, New York, Abrams, 1971, p. 29
1970s - 1980s

Life , Art , Passion , Time

“Reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

cnn.com http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/

God , Faith , Music , Thinking

“It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line…. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”

Guy Debord book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Source: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), Ch. 10.

Children , Age , Education , Knowledge

“Rainer [protagonist in the novel], who is reading The Outsider by Camus, says he would like to put the hostility of the world behind him. Once your hope for something better is taken from you, then at last you have the present all in your hand. Then you yourself are reality. Others are extras. When Rainer contemplated san evening he says that evening is melancholy ceasefire where all life has come to and end.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

53
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

Life , Hostility , World , Hope

“I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition
for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez,
then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy…
In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Bernard to Pope Eugene III, letter 240:1, A.D. 1146, concerning the election of a certain unworthy bishop at the Church of Rodez (see letter 328). In The Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, John Mabillon, Samuel J. Eales, Volume 2, p. 705

Love , Truth , World , Hope

“If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter to her aunts, 1876; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 155
Berthe wrote this letter after the second Impressionist exhibition of April 1876 where she was participating with 19 pictures (Monet with 18!)
1871 - 1880

Law , Art , Failure , Thinking

“Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also."
"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald at the Theatre"
Reginald (1904)

Books , Wealth

“This evening the Anthroposophical Society invited me to give a lecture about modern art, on 13 March. They start to wake up here [in the Netherlands]… Please, tell me something, what I should emphasize, what you find most important. I shall also read something from 'The Spiritual in Art' by Kandinsky… But we still have other views on the whole, isn't it. I don't always agree with Kandinsky, and often more with your views. So please write a little much… You know, for me it is always easier to paint my principles.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Heute abend bin ich durch den Anthroposophischen Verein eingeladen (worden) am 13. März einen Vortrag über moderne Kunst zu halten. Man fängt hier an zu erwachen.. .Bitte, sage mir einiges, was ich speziell betonen soll, was Du am wichtigsten findest. Ich werde dann auch aus 'Das Geistige in der Kunst' von Kandinsky.. ..etwas vorlesen. Aber wir haben doch in Ganzen noch andere Ansichten. Ich stimme nicht immer met Kandinsky überein, und oft mehr mit Deinen Ansichten. Also bitte schreibe ein bisschen viel.. .Du weisst, ich finde es immer einfacher, meine Prinzipien zu malen.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 28 Feb. 1916; from the 'Sturm'-Archive, Berlin
1910's

Art , Painting

“Many a head that down had lain,
Impatient with its twelve hours' pain,
And wishing that the bed it prest,
Were, as the grave's, a long last rest,
Has sprung again at morning's call,
Forgiving, or forgetting all;
Lighting the weary weight of thought
With colours from the day-break brought,
Reading new promise in the sky,
And hearing Hope, the lark on high.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pain , Hope , Forgiveness , Light

“Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Nobel Lecture (2010)

Life

“People who don’t read are brutes. It is better to write than to make war, isn’t it?”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

War , People

“People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified — which is sometimes useful.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

People

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 22.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life , Books , Soul

“Indeed, most of what is in history books is stark, raving mad —the maddest of all being the historian's belief that it is sane. For some time now, I often cry when I watch the evening news, read newspapers, or study history books, a reaction I was trained to suppress in every school I attended for 25 years. In fact, it is because we so often switch into our social alters when we try to study history that we cannot understand it —our real emotions are dissociated. Those who are able to remain outside the social trance are the individuals whose personal insights are beyond those of their neighbors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 5, pp. 108-109.

Books , School , History , Understanding

“Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 25

Drink , Water , Wine , Past

“Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs… that is, to the mean, the ignoble, the worthless. To shopkeepers and the low born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer, fasting, religious charity and the Hajj pilgrimage along with some chapters of the Quran and some doctrines of the faith without which their religion cannot be correct and valid prayers are not possible. They are to be instructed in nothing more. They are not to be taught reading and writing for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low-born in knowledge…”

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Chapter 2.
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Faith , Religion , Dogs , Knowledge

“This is, after all, a book about reading, and the kind of reader I am addressing does not care primarily about being in fashion.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books , Fashion

“Nowadays, there is a new trend that has started. Up to [assembly election] results, they were targeting Modi. Now it is very difficult for them to target Modi. So now you must have read so many articles, so many discussions on the TV: "there's something wrong with the people of Gujarat."”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

This has the [sic] started!
2008, Speech, 14 January 2008

People

“The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him; teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure,—among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;—not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should have something to speak!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Life , Wisdom , Men , God

“Could you spend a week or even a day without reading your emails, using social media or going online? Someone recently joked with me that having Internet access is more important than having food or water.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Food , Water

“I really enjoy good murder mystery writers, usually women, frequently English, because they have a sense of what the human soul is about and why people do dark and terrible things. I also read quite a lot in the area of particle physics and quantum mechanics, because this is theology. This is about the nature of being. This is what life is all about. I try to read as widely as I possibly can.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)

Life , Women , People , Soul