1 |
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know |
2 |
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift |
3 |
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read |
4 |
If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book |
5 |
Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities |
6 |
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader |
7 |
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own |
8 |
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading |
9 |
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them |
10 |
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame |
11 |
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one |
12 |
A good book is an event in my life |
13 |
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all |
14 |
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body |
15 |
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing |
16 |
A good book would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. |
17 |
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book |
18 |
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once |
19 |
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say |
20 |
Books may well be the only true magic |
21 |
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents |
22 |
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all |
23 |
The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it |
24 |
Reading one book is like eating one potato chip |
25 |
Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you |
26 |
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore |
27 |
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself |
28 |
Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks |
29 |
Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading |
30 |
Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness |
31 |
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in |
32 |
Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well |
33 |
Reading brings us unknown friends |
34 |
Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere |
35 |
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading |
36 |
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all |
37 |
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours |
38 |
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall |
39 |
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them |
40 |
For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime |
41 |
That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet |
42 |
Reading is important. If you know how to read, then the whole world opens up to you |
43 |
Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map |
44 |
I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them |
45 |
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story |
46 |
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life |
47 |
You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild to pick up a book and read to a child |
48 |
Reading — even browsing — an old book can yield sustenance denied by a database search |
49 |
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you |
50 |
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries |