quotations about reading
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
BEN HECHT
attributed, Jewish Wit and Wisdom
By reading a man does, as it were, antidate his life, and makes himself contemporary with past ages.
J. COLLIER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Mezzanine
Read to live, not live to read.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Caxtons
Sound and healthy reading will develop and enkindle the soul, enlighten the mind, and vivify and direct the imagination.
LOUISE SWANTON BELLOC
attributed, Day's Collacon
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
JOHN LOCKE
A Treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, Book Savvy
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO
The Uses of Literature
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
WALTER SCOTT
The Monastery
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Miracle of Language
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.
NORA EPHRON
I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
We read for instruction, for correction, and for consolation.
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
The man who does not read ... has no advantage over the man who can't read.
MARK TWAIN
attributed, The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain
Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
To read is to enter an intercourse with a text.
VARUN BEGLEY
"The Unbearable Freud"
It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
JOHANNES KEPLER
attributed, The Martyrs of Science
By reading we acquaint ourselves in a very extensive manner with the affairs, actions, and thoughts of the living and the dead, in the most remote nations and in the most distant ages; and that with as much ease as though they lived in our own age and nation.
ISAAC WATTS
The Improvement of the Mind
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Decay of Lying
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
LADY W. M. MONTAGUE
attributed, Day's Collacon