One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention, and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied but to be read.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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.
—Walter Benjamin
Reading serves for delight, for ornament, for ability.—The crafty contemn it; the simple admire it; the wise use it.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Never read any book that is not a year old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
—Anita Brookner (1928–2016) English Novelist, Art Historian
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Books worth reading once are worth reading twice; and what is most important of all, the masterpieces of literature are worth reading a thousand times.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Political Leader, Writer, Editor, Journalist
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
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one’s mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life…
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment…. The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
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
The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions-there we have none.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
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.
—Charles Kingsley (1819–75) English Clergyman, Academic, Historian, Novelist
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
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.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
A book might be written on the injustice of the just.
—Anthony Hope (1863–1933) English Novelist, Playwright
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him, and travel in his company.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Books succeed, and lives fail.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
I would like the events never to be told directly by the author, but rather to be introduced (and several times, from various angles) by those among the characters on whom they will have had any effect. I would like those events, in the account they will make of them, to appear slightly distorted; a kind of interest stems, for the reader, from the simple fact that he should need to restore. The story requires his collaboration in order to properly take shape.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Read in order to live.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.
—Indian Proverb
No furniture is so charming as books.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. ‘Tis thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Leibnitz has obtained this fruit from his great reading, that he has a mind better exercised for receiving all sorts of ideas, more susceptible of all forms, more accessible to that which is new and even opposed to him, more indulgent to human weakness, more disposed to favorable interpretations, and more industrious to find them.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French Essayist, Polymath, Philosopher
Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that could change our lives.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker