Quotes About Reading

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them.

The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment.

Es wäre gut, Bücher zu kaufen, wenn man die Zeit, sie zu lesen, mitkaufen könnte.

Hence much reading deprives the mind of all elasticity, as a weight continually pressing upon it does a spring, and the most certain means of never having any original thoughts is to take a book in hand at once, at every spare moment. This practice is the reason why scholarship makes most men more unintelligent and stupid than they are by nature, and deprives their writings of all success; they are, as Pope says— 'For ever reading, never to be read'.

Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

Seria bom comprar livros se, junto com eles, fosse possível comprar também o tempo para lê-los, mas na maioria das vezes troca-se a compra dos livros pela aquisição do seu conteúdo.

Ah, how little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

O, wie wenig muss doch einer zu denken gehabt haben, damit er soviel hat lesen können!

Hay que leer tan sólo cuando se seca la fuente de los propios pensamientos; lo cual sucede con frecuencia aun a las mejores cabezas.

Leer es pensar con la cabeza de otro en lugar de con la propia.

If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them

Lesen heißt mit einem fremden Kopfe, statt des eigenen, denken.

Ah! How little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much. And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive.

Revolutions can, and often have, begun with reading. The Doctor and the Saint

Mary, do you ever really read the work of Black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us? This is not a rhetorical question.

It was not uncommon to walk in the door of their home and find my mother sitting on the sofa reading over a manuscript with shampoo horns sculpted into her hair. Anne Sexton's voice would be blasting from the speakers. A woman who writes feels too much...

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.

He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.

When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.

Books are no longer read but eaten, not made of paper but of some informational substance, fully digestible, sugar-coated.

Ksi??k? mo?na czytelnikowi g?ow?, owszem przemeblowa? o tyle, o ile jakie? meble ju? w niej przed lektur? sta?y.