#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.”

“Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.”

“If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”

“If you love to read, you can learn anything you really want to know.”

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle them, and, as it were, fondle them. Let them fall open where they will. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas.”

“I read for the 'ah-ha's,' the information that makes a light bulb go off in my mind. I want to put information in my mind that is going to be the most beneficial to me, my family and my fellow man - financially, morally, spiritually, and emotionally.”

“A room without books is like a life without meaning.”

“Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.”

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.”

“The virtue of books is to be readable.”

“I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don't misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives.”

“I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it.”

“I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.”

“When a new book appears one should read an old one.”

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.”

“The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own.”

“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”

“I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I'm in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.”

“As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

“So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.”

“As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!”

“A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.”

“All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence.”

“Reading put perspective to any challenge I was facing and made me see that extraordinary people usually had extraordinary pain, difficulties or injustices. That's part of why they have the drive and hunger to do good in the world, to make something happen.”

“O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.”

“To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination.”