Quotes About Reading

It is hard for anyone to read with understanding what one takes to be wrong or wrong-headed.

Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, wheras literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life.

The acquisition of a book signalled not just the potential acquisition of knowledge but also something like the property rights to a piece of ground: the knowledge became a visitable place.

She wanted to read and talk and laugh and watch television and listen to the radio. She wanted to watch the world around her go by, and make up stories in her head about everything she saw...Like a princess in a carriage, surveying her kingdom, preferably one with a magical forest.

He says he knows someone isn't from the same race as he when that person looks at his library and asks, 'Have you read all of these?' A true book lover knows that, no, he hasn't read them all. It's about the process, it's about when the right reference comes up, you have the right book to go to; it's about never being without something to occupy your eyes and mind.

Reading is a foundation o every knowledge an all the pure and the wise thoughts.

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a book.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.—George Bernard Shaw

That was his favorite thing about books—they took you off to other people's lives an' places, but you could still set in your own chair by th'oil heater, warm as a mouse in a churn.

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Violà! Bookshelves!

Thomas à Kempis: "Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a book.

Are you reading your Bible?" Ah, well...I was." And then you quit." You got it." Then, you can expect to be weak on one of your flanks, and that's precisely where the Enemy will come after you with a vengeance.

Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence.

Voordat ze in mijn boekenkasten verdwijnen leef ik tussen stapels boeken als tussen bloeiende struiken.

Everything Jane Austen read came alive, but, at the same time, her natural empathy with those she encountered through her reading was kept in check by a keen sense of the ridiculous and of the potential absurdity of emotional display.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

To read is to empower, To empower is to write, To write is to influence, To influence is to change, To change is to live".

it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.

Halfway across town, Father Tibor Kasparian lay on the long hard cement cot that was what this jail cell had for a bed and wished he had a book. It could be any book. He didn't really think he could read right now, but it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.

She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

I glide a finger along the raised golden edge of the title. I fan the pages and inhale the scent of fresh ink. I sigh in contentment when I think about how good it will be to lose myself in these pages. I'm so lost in thought,