quotations about reading
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
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"On Thinking for Oneself", Parerga und Paralipomena
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
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Read to live, not live to read.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Caxtons
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO
The Uses of Literature
What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."
LILI TAYLOR
O Magazine, August 2006
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
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
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
ANONYMOUS
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
We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
To read is to enter an intercourse with a text.
VARUN BEGLEY
"The Unbearable Freud"
There are some who say that sitting at home reading is the equivalent of travel, because the experiences described in the book are more or less the same as the experiences one might have on a voyage, and there are those who say that there is no substitute for venturing out into the world. My own opinion is that it is best to travel extensively but to read the entire time, hardly glancing up to look out of the window of the airplane, train, or hired camel.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
The best moments in reading are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
ALAN BENNETT
The History Boys
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
I will read anything rather than work.
JEAN KERR
introduction, Please Don't Eat the Daisies
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
G. M. TREVELYAN
English Social History
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
WALTER SCOTT
The Monastery
A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Long Fall