Reading Quotes

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

E.S. Barrett

He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.

Barrow

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.

Stan Barstow

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Martin Luther

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Clifton Fadiman

Read Homer once, and you can read no more. For all books else appear so mean, and so poor. Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, and Homer will be all the books you need.

Duke of Buckingham

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

Richard De Bury

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Desiderius Erasmus

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Salman Rushdie

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

Salman Rushdie

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Sir William Temple

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed

Sir William Temple

The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Walter Benjamin

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

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.

Johnson

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.

Johnson

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.

Laurence Sterne

The age of the book is almost gone.

George Steiner

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

Henry Fielding