Reading quotes
6.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside reading — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward."
"Asleep or awake, writing or reading, whatever you do, you must never be without the remembrance of God."
"The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written."
"Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you've spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers."
"Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time."
"After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter."
"I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television."
"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain."
"I quite like convincing the person the broom is their favourite actress. They are talking to a broom and they think it's Julia Roberts and they snog it. In Reading one guy took the broom into the wings and was getting amorous with it. I had a struggle to get it back. He was exhausted when he came out."
"What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person"
"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."
"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions."
"Indeed the general natural Tendency of Reading good History, must be, to fix in the Minds of Youth deep Impressions of the Beauty and Usefulness of Virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude."
"When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it."
"It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."
"I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book."
"Whether I'm at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I'm looking forward to reading."
"My job is about the most fun thing I do, but I have a broad set of interests, going places, reading things, doing things."
"I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage."
