I hope and hoping feeds my pain
I weep and weeping feeds my failing heart
I laugh but the laughter does not pass within
I burn but the burning makes no mark outside
—Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Florentine Political Philosopher
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
—Austin Phelps (1820–90) American Presbyterian Clergyman, Educator, Theologian
Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
—Peregrine Worsthorne (1923–2020) British Journalist, Writer, Broadcaster
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
—Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American Philosopher, Educator
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.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the museum mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to reconstitute a past, to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of Victor Hugo, whom, a few days before, giving the rein for once in a way to the joy of life, he had purchased in seventy bound volumes, a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, while he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter..
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
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.
—Harold S. Geneen (1910–1997) British-American Businessman
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.
—Jim Bishop (1907–87) American Journalist, Author
Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
—Steven Spielberg (b.1946) American Film Director, Screenwriter, Film Producer, Businessperson
We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
—Frank Lane (1896–1981) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Political Scientist, Humorist
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?
—John W. Foster
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.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
—James Thurber
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
—Louis L’Amour (1908–88) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Think as well as read, and when you read. Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may make upon them. Hear what they have to say; but examine it, weigh it, and judge for yourselves. This will enable you to make a right use of books—to use them as helpers, not as guides to your understanding; as counselors, not as dictators of what you are to think and believe.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
I read part of it all the way through.
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
Never read any book that is not a year old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.
—Elie Wiesel (b.1928) Romanian-born American Writer, Professor, Political Activist
We live in an age that reads too much to be wise.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Every reader if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; some to talk, and these are the great majority.—The first page of an author frequently suffices all the purposes of this latter class, of whom it has been said, they treat books, as some do lords, inform themselves of their titles, and then boast of an intimate acquaintance.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.
—Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) Anglican Church Historian, Clergyman
Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today’s youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow’s leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.
—Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
If you believe everything you read, you better not read.
—Japanese Proverb
Hypocrite reader—my fellow—my brother!
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
—Harper Lee (1926–2016) American Novelist
The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
—Nikki Giovanni (b.1943) American Poet, Writer, Activist, Educator
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
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.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist