“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.”

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

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.”

“A man who can’t read only knows what other folks tell him.”

“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.”

“The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.”

“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.”

“Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.”