“We read with our ears”

“A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.”

“I mean to indicate the reading of poetry not merely for the sensual ear, but for the mind's ear as well; yet the mind's ear can be trained only by the other, and the matter, practically considered, comes inescapably back to the reading of poetry aloud.”

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

“We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”

“We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.”

“The eye—it cannot choose but see;
we cannot bid the ear be still;
our bodies feel, where'er they be,
against or with our will.”

“Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."”

“Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead. The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.”

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?”