Reading Quotes

“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.”

“We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours.”

“I can find my biography in every fable that I read.”

“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.”

“It is a tie between men to have read the same book.”

“One must be an inventor to read well.”

“The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.”

“An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.”

“Read o'er this And after, this, and then to breakfast with What appetite you have.”

“We expect a great man to be a good reader.”

“In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.”

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

“But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.”

“The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.”

“Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.”

“There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one. As as author I would not recommend too strict an adherence to this saying.”

“Read proudly--put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.”

“We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.”

“Books are for nothing but to inspire”

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

“I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all.”

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

“Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.”