READING QUOTES III
quotations about reading
Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Ostig in Sky", A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
EDMUND BURKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Mlle de Chantepie, June 1857
The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Citizen of the World
What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 74
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
People read everything nowadays, except books.
MADAME SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I tend to believe that computers are drawing kids -- and adults -- away from reading purely because they provide an alternative, vast source of spare-time amusement and entertainment. I recently heard a frightening statistic: there are less than one million true readers in this country (those who read every day instead of one book per year on a beach). Terrifying.
TIM LEBBON
interview, Infinity Plus
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
G. M. TREVELYAN
English Social History
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
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
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
Learn to read slow; all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.
WILLIAM WALKER
Art of Reading
Multifarious reading weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying dormant.
F. W. ROBERTSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
Too much reading and too much meditation may produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by the excess of the oil, whose office it is to feed it.
GEORGE SEATON BOWES
Illustrative Gatherings for Preachers and Teachers
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
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird