Books - Reading Quotes
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.Books - Reading
Adams, Dawn
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
Books - Reading
Addison, Joseph
1672-1719 British Essayist Poet Statesman
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
Books - Reading
Addison, Joseph
1672-1719 British Essayist Poet Statesman
In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Books - Reading
Adler, Mortimer J.
1902 American Educator Philosopher
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
Books - Reading
Adler, Mortimer J.
1902 American Educator Philosopher
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
Books - Reading
Alcott, Amos Bronson
1799-1888 American Educator Social Reformer
Beware of the person of one book.
Books - Reading
Aquinas, St. Thomas
1225-1274 Italian Scholastic Philosopher and Theologian
I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
Books - Reading
Asimov, Isaac
1920-1992 Russian-born American Author
He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
Books - Reading
Aubrey, John
1626-161997 British Antiquarian Writer
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
Books - Reading
Auden, W. H.
1907-1973 Anglo-American Poet
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
Books - Reading
Auden, W. H.
1907-1973 Anglo-American Poet
Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior s Manual]
Books - Reading
Bach, Richard
1936 American Author
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Books - Reading
Bachelard, Gaston
1884-1962 French Scientist Philosopher Literary Theorist
Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested.
Books - Reading
Bacon, Francis
1561-1626 British Philosopher Essayist Statesman
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Books - Reading
Bacon, Francis
1561-1626 British Philosopher Essayist Statesman
Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.
Books - Reading
Baker, Nicholson
1957 American Author
When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.
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Baldwin, James
1924-1987 American Author
He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.
Books - Reading
Balfour, Arthur James
1848-1930 British Conservative Politician Prime Minister
Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
Books - Reading
Barrett, E.S.
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
Books - Reading
Barrie, Sir James M.
1860-1937 British Playwright
He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.
Books - Reading
Barrow
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it s also full of fourth-rate readers.
Books - Reading
Barstow, Stan
1928 British Novelist Playwright
Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!
Books - Reading
Baudelaire, Charles
1821-1867 French Poet
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
Books - Reading
Beecher, Henry Ward
1813-1887 American Preacher Orator Writer
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Books - Reading
Beecher, Henry Ward
1813-1887 American Preacher Orator Writer
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Books - Reading
Beecher, Henry Ward
1813-1887 American Preacher Orator Writer
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Books - Reading
Belloc, Hilaire
1870-1953 British Author
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
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Benet, Stephen Vincent
1989-1943 American Novelist Poet
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
Books - Reading
Benjamin, Walter
1982-1940 German Critic Philosopher
The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.
Books - Reading
Benjamin, Walter
1982-1940 German Critic Philosopher
Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.
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Bennett, Arnold
1867-1931 British Novelist
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
Books - Reading
Benson, Arthur Christopher
1862-1925 British Author Poet
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story s voice makes everything its own.
Books - Reading
Berger, John
1926 British Actor Critic
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
Books - Reading
Bevan, Aneurin
1897-1960 British Labor Politician
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
Books - Reading
Birrell, Augustine
1850-1933 British Essayist Liberal Politician
Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.
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Blackie, Professor
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Books - Reading
Bloom, Allan
1930-1992 American Educator Author
A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.
Books - Reading
Bradbury, Malcolm
1932 British Author
You don t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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Bradbury, Ray
1920 American Science Fiction Writer
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Books - Reading
Brodsky, Joseph
1940 Russian-born American Poet Critic
A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.
Books - Reading
Brooke, Rupert
1887-1915 British Poet
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
Books - Reading
Brookner, Anita
1938 British Novelist Art Historian
It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.
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Brougham, Lord Henry P.
1778-1868 Scottish Whig Politician
Begin to read a book that will help you move toward your dream.
Books - Reading
Brown, Les
1945 American Speaker Author Trainer Motivator Lecturer
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father s name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning s dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
Books - Reading
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
1806-1861 British Poet
Books succeed, and lives fail.
Books - Reading
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
1806-1861 British Poet
When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
Books - Reading
Bruyere, Jean De La
1645-1696 French Classical Writer
Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.
Books - Reading
Buckingham, Duke of
1628-1687 British Poet Satirist Dramatist
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
Books - Reading
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
1803-1873 British Novelist Poet
In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.
Books - Reading
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
1803-1873 British Novelist Poet
Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
Books - Reading
Burgess, Anthony
1917-1993 British Writer Critic
Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
Books - Reading
Bury, Richard De
1287-1345 British Chancellor
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
Books - Reading
Butler, Samuel
1612-1680 British Poet Satirist
Tis pleasant, sure, to see one s name in print; A book s a book, although there s nothing in it.
Books - Reading
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.
Books - Reading
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands two new approaches to the written word. First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information, by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore. Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by reading faster and with greater comprehension.
Books - Reading
Calano, Jimmy
A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
Books - Reading
Camus, Albert
1913-1960 French Existential Writer
A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.
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Carey, Joyce
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
Books - Reading
Carlyle, Thomas
1795-1881 Scottish Philosopher Author
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
Books - Reading
Carlyle, Thomas
1795-1881 Scottish Philosopher Author
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Books - Reading
Carlyle, Thomas
1795-1881 Scottish Philosopher Author
If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.
Books - Reading
Carlyle, Thomas
1795-1881 Scottish Philosopher Author
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.
Books - Reading
Carter, Angela
1940-1992 British Author
The novel can t compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who s had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.
Books - Reading
Celine, Louis-Ferdinand
1894-1961 French Author
A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.
Books - Reading
Chambers, Oswald
1874-1917 Scottish Preacher Author
Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.
Books - Reading
Chambers, Oswald
1874-1917 Scottish Preacher Author
Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.
Books - Reading
Chambers, Robert
1802-1871 Scottish Publisher Writer
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Books - Reading
Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De
1741-1794 French Writer Journalist Playwright
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Books - Reading
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
A good title is the title of a successful book.
Books - Reading
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
Books - Reading
Channing, William Ellery
1780-1842 American Unitarian Minister Author
God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
Books - Reading
Channing, William Ellery
1780-1842 American Unitarian Minister Author
Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
Books - Reading
Channing, William Ellery
1780-1842 American Unitarian Minister Author
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring
Books - Reading
Chappell, Warren
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Books - Reading
Chesterfield, Lord
1694-1773 British Statesman Author
Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.
Books - Reading
Chesterfield, Lord
1694-1773 British Statesman Author
The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
Books - Reading
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
A good novel tells us the truth about it s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Books - Reading
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
A book is the only immortality.
Books - Reading
Choate, Rufus
1799-1859 American Lawyer Statesman
Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.
Books - Reading
Choate, Rufus
1799-1859 American Lawyer Statesman
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
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Cicero, Marcus T.
c 106-43 BC Great Roman Orator Politician
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.
Books - Reading
Clarendon
Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
Books - Reading
Cobbett, William
1762-1835 British Journalist Reformer
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought -- asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
Books - Reading
Collier, Jeremy
1650-1726 British Clergyman Conjuror
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
Books - Reading
Colton, Charles Caleb
1780-1832 British Sportsman Writer
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us -- never cease to instruct -- never cloy.
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Colton, Charles Caleb
1780-1832 British Sportsman Writer
A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.
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Cooley, Charles Horton
1864-1929 American Sociologist
I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.
Books - Reading
Coolio
1963 American Musician Rapper Actor Singer Songwriter
The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
Books - Reading
Crane, Frank
American Actor
You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.
Books - Reading
Critchfield, Jim
The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal blocks or bites of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental picture and entertainment-not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant.
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Cutler, Wade E.
A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.
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Cuyler, Theodore L.
1822-1909 American Pastor Author
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
Books - Reading
Dane, Frank
Next, in importance to books are their titles.
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Davies, Paul
1946 British Physicist Popularizer of Science
If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.
Books - Reading
Davies, Robertson
1913 Canadian Novelist Journalist
I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn t even been colored in yet.
Books - Reading
Dawkins, John
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.
Books - Reading
Dawson, Christopher
1898-1970 Welsh Cultural Historian Educational Theorist
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men s hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.
Books - Reading
Day, Clarence
1874-1935 American Essayist
Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
Books - Reading
Denham, Sir John
1615-1668 British Poet Dramatist
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.
Books - Reading
Descartes, Rene
1596-1650 French Philosopher Scientist
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Books - Reading
Dickens, Charles
1812-1870 British Novelist
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
Books - Reading
Dickinson, Emily
1830-1886 American Poet
He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
Books - Reading
Dickinson, Emily
1830-1886 American Poet
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.
Books - Reading
Disney, Walt
1901-1966 American Artist Film Producer
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
Books - Reading
Disney, Walt
1901-1966 American Artist Film Producer
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
Books - Reading
Disraeli, Benjamin
1804-1881 British Statesman Prime Minister
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Books - Reading
Disraeli, Benjamin
1804-1881 British Statesman Prime Minister
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
Books - Reading
Disraeli, Isaac
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
Books - Reading
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
1859-1930 British Author Sherlock Holmes
Never judge a book by its movie.
Books - Reading
Eagan, J. W.
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.
Books - Reading
Eagleton, Terry
1943 British Critic
The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.
Books - Reading
Eco, Umberto
1929 Italian Novelist and critic
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
Books - Reading
Edwards, Tryon
1809-1894 American Theologian
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
Books - Reading
Eliot, George
1819-1880 British Novelist
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Never read any book that is not a year old.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
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 - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Books - Reading
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Books - Reading
Erasmus, Desiderius
c1466-1536 Dutch Humanist
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
Books - Reading
Fadiman, Cliff
American Writer
The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
Books - Reading
Faulkner, William
1897-1962 American Novelist
Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you ll find out. If it s not, throw it out the window.
Books - Reading
Faulkner, William
1897-1962 American Novelist
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
Books - Reading
FeNelon, Francois
1651-1715 French Writer
We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.
Books - Reading
Fielding, Henry
1707-1754 British Novelist Dramatist
There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Books - Reading
Fielding, Henry
1707-1754 British Novelist Dramatist
Read in order to live.
Books - Reading
Flaubert, Gustave
1821-1880 French Novelist
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Books - Reading
Forster, Edward M.
1879-1970 British Novelist Essayist
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
Books - Reading
Forster, Edward M.
1879-1970 British Novelist Essayist
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Books - Reading
Forster, Edward M.
1879-1970 British Novelist Essayist
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
Books - Reading
France, Anatole
1844-1924 French Writer
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
Books - Reading
Franklin, Benjamin
1706-1790 American Scientist Publisher Diplomat
Read much, but not many books.
Books - Reading
Franklin, Benjamin
1706-1790 American Scientist Publisher Diplomat
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Books - Reading
Frost, Robert
1875-1963 American Poet
I don t think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.
Books - Reading
Fuentes, Carlos
1928 Mexican Novelist Short-Story Writer
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Books - Reading
Fuller, Margaret
1810-1850 American Writer Lecturer
It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore.
Books - Reading
Fuller, Margaret
1810-1850 American Writer Lecturer
A book that is shut is but a block.
Books - Reading
Fuller, Thomas
1608-1661 British Clergyman Author
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Books - Reading
Fusselman, W.
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
Books - Reading
Geneen, Harold S.
1910 American Accountant Industrialist CEO ITT
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
Books - Reading
Gibbon, Edward
1737-1794 British Historian
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
Books - Reading
Gibbon, Edward
1737-1794 British Historian
I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.
Books - Reading
Gissing, George Robert
1857-1903 British Novelist Critic Essayist
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Books - Reading
Goldsmith, Oliver
1728-1774 Anglo-Irish Author Poet Playwright
The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one.
Books - Reading
Goldsmith, Sir James
I read part of it all the way through.
Books - Reading
Goldwyn, Samuel
1882-1974 American Film Producer Founder MGM
Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill by the numbers, recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.
Books - Reading
Gross, Jacquelyn
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Books - Reading
Guin, Ursula K. Le
1929 American Author
I have read your book and much like it.
Books - Reading
Hadas, Moses
1900-1966 American Classicist and Translator
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I ll waste no time reading it.
Books - Reading
Hadas, Moses
1900-1966 American Classicist and Translator
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
Books - Reading
Hardwick, Elizabeth
1916 American Novelist
Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.
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Harington, John
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
Books - Reading
Hayakawa, S. I.
1902-1992 Canadian Born American Senator Educator
If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
Books - Reading
Hazlitt, William
1778-1830 British Essayist
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other.
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Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Books - Reading
Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
Old books, you know well, are books of the world s youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
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Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
Books - Reading
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
Books - Reading
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, The medicines of the soul.
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Hood, Paxton
Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.
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Hood, Paxton
My books kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon.
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Hood, Thomas
1799-1845 British Poet and Humorist
A book might be written on the injustice of the just.
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Hope, Anthony
1863-1933 British Writer
Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.
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Horowitz, Lois
American Librarian
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
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Howells, William Dean
1837-1920 American Novelist Critic
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
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Hubbard, Elbert
1859-1915 American Author Publisher
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Books - Reading
Hugo, Victor
1802-1885 French Poet Dramatist Novelist
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
Books - Reading
Hugo, Victor
1802-1885 French Poet Dramatist Novelist
It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.
Books - Reading
Hunt, Leigh
1784-1859 British Poet Essayist
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author s soul.
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Huxley, Aldous
1894-1963 British Author
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
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Huxley, Thomas H.
1825-1895 British Biologist Educator
The newest books are those that never grow old.
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Jackson, George Holbrook
1874-1948 British Essayist Literary Historian
Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.
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Jackson, Holbrook
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
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James, Henry
1843-1916 American Author
I cannot live without books.
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Jefferson, Thomas
1743-1826 Third President of the USA
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Books - Reading
Jefferson, Thomas
1743-1826 Third President of the USA
Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.
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Johnson
Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
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Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Books - Reading
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Books - Reading
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
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Joineriana
You will be the same person in five as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.
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Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''
American Motivational Speaker Author
There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
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Joubert, Joseph
1754-1824 French Moralist
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
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Joubert, Joseph
1754-1824 French Moralist
One man is as good as another until he has written a book.
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Jowett, Benjamin
1817-1893 British Scholar
The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine -- but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
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Keith, Sir Arthur
Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.
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Kempis, Thomas
1379-1471 German Monk Mystic Religious Writer
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is pleasure beyond compare.
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Kenko, Yoshida
I am a part of everything that I have read.
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Kieran, John
We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things -- the teacher of all truth.
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Kingsley, Charles
1819-1875 British Author Clergyman
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
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Kingsley, Charles
1819-1875 British Author Clergyman
A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil s policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.
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Kirk, E.N.
You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.
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Kump, Peter
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
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Lamb, Charles
1775-1834 British Essayist Critic
Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
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Lamb, Charles
1775-1834 British Essayist Critic
I love to lose myself in other men s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.
Books - Reading
Lamb, Charles
1775-1834 British Essayist Critic
What is reading, but silent conversation.
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Landor, Walter Savage
1775-1864 British Poet Essayist
After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That s what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that s what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn t like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.
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Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
One sheds one s sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one s emotions, to be master of them.
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Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
I can t bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
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Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Books - Reading
Leacock, Stephen B.
1869-1944 Canadian Humorist Economist
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
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Lee, Harper
1926 American Author
You ve really got to start hitting the books because it s no joke out here.
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Lee, Spike
1956 American Film director
For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion s little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own.
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Lejeune, Caroline
1897-1973 British Film Critic
I feel like I m drowning. Every night, I m carrying home loads of things to read but I m too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.
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Levine, Ghita
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
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Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don t we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.
Books - Reading
Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
Books - Reading
Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can t expect an apostle to look out.
Books - Reading
Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who ll get me a book I ain t read.
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Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
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Locke, John
1632-1704 British Philosopher
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart s history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1819-1892 American Poet
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings --as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.
Books - Reading
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1819-1892 American Poet
All books are either dreams or swords.
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Lowell, Amy
1874-1925 American Poet Critic
For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
Books - Reading
Lowell, Amy
1874-1925 American Poet Critic
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
Books - Reading
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
Books - Reading
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.
Books - Reading
Luther, Martin
1483-1546 German Leader of the Protestant Reformation
In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.
Books - Reading
Lytton, Lord Edward
1803-1873 British Writer Statesman
A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Books - Reading
Maclennan, Hugh
1907-1990 Canadian Novelist Essayist
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
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Mallarme, Stephane
1842-1898 French Symbolist Poet
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
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Mann, Horace
1796-1859 American Educator
The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
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Mansfield, Katherine
1888-1923 New Zealand-born British Author
Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.
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Marcel, Anthony
Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.
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Martineau, Harriet
1802-1876 British Writer Social Critic
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
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Marx, Groucho
1895-1977 American Comic Actor
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
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Maugham, W. Somerset
1874-1965 British Novelist Playwright
What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.
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Mccay, James T.
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
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Mccosh
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continui