Reading Quotes

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

E. M. Forster

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Edward Gibbon

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Edward Gibbon

Books in a large university library system: 2, 000,000. Books in an average large city library: 1 0,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30, 000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20, 000.

Lois Horowitz

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Atwood H. Townsend

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.

Professor Blackie

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

Joseph Addison, "The Spectator",

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

Hannah More

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.

John Milton

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

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.

John Milton

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.

John Milton

A good book is the precious life-blood of the master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond.

John Milton

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Jean Rhys

Beware of the person of one book.

Thomas Aquinas

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A book that is shut is but a block.

Thomas Fuller

A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.

Stephen King

[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...

Neil Gaiman

Even Morgan seems to me to be based on some hidden rock. Talking of Proust and Lawrence he said he'd prefer to be Lawrence; but much rather would be himself. He is aloof, serene, a snob, he says, reading masterpieces only.

Virginia Woolf