READING QUOTES III
quotations about reading
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
Some people read too much: the bibliobuli ... who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through the most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
H. L. MENCKEN
"Minority Report", Notebooks
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Citizen of the World
The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.
NEIL GAIMAN
"Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian, October 15, 2013
I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
GROUCHO MARX
letter to S. J. Perelman
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
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
EDMUND BURKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.
C. S. LEWIS
"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
People read everything nowadays, except books.
MADAME SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Multifarious reading weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying dormant.
F. W. ROBERTSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
W. FUSSELLMAN
"Slogans for a Library", The Library, April 1926
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
ANONYMOUS
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
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
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
G. M. TREVELYAN
English Social History
Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live