Quotes About Reading

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading

Now I will be anything else you please, except dull. You may say I have been dull already? As I am an honest woman, I don't agree with you. There are some people who bring dull minds to their reading - and them blame the writer for it. I say no more.

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.

I found out after reading quite a lot of it that it is not rated very high. He has a very descriptive way of writing but also lengthy. May not want to finish!!!!! This was his 1sr and only try ast Historical Fiction!

If you are as tired of reading this narrative as I am of writing it—Lord, how we shall enjoy ourselves on both sides a few pages further on!

In books we converse with the wise, as in action with fools. That is, if we know how to select our books. Some books are to be tasted, reads a famous passage, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.

but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales.

There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza; or, better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza, or better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

In books "we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." That is, if we know how to select our books. "Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested"; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.

Frederick agreed that the punishment of La Barre was extreme; for his part he would rather have condemned the youth to read the entire Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas; this, he thought, would be a fate worse than death.

So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be understood as experience and thought, not as mere reading or passive study.

Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested";

Tea chests full of the rotting correspondence of the parents Busner had never know, their serrated postcards, their now blotched but once creamy notepaper folded into thick envelopes that had been extravagantly franked and stamped. All of it he had foreseen himself unpacking, unsheathing and unfolding, so that the pressed flowers bloomed into dust as he read the missives for the first time since their long-gone recipients set the sheets to one side.

To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones.

Does a bibliophile ever have enough room on his shelves? The answer is obvious: get more shelves.

Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white.

Children of the future age, Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a crime

Ich bin für gute Unterhaltung, feuchtfröhliche Abende, Intimität, vins rouges en carafe, Lesen, relative Einsamkeit, Straßenbekanntschaften … Ich bin für die europäischen Verworrenheiten, die unergründlichen und mannigfachen Schichtungen der Alten Welt, für den Norden, für die Welt der Gedanken. Ich bin für das Hôtel de la Louisiane.

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.