Quotes about books - reading

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends."

Adams, Dawn on books - reading
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"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."

Addison, Joseph on books - reading
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"Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."

Addison, Joseph on books - reading
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"In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."

Adler, Mortimer J. on books - reading
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"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life."

Adler, Mortimer J. on books - reading
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"That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit."

Alcott, Amos Bronson on books - reading
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"Beware of the person of one book."

Aquinas, St. Thomas on books - reading
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"I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander."

Asimov, Isaac on books - reading
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"He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men."

Aubrey, John on books - reading
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"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
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"Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
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"Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]"

Bach, Richard on books - reading
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"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry."

Bachelard, Gaston on books - reading
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"Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested."

Bacon, Francis on books - reading
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"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider."

Bacon, Francis on books - reading
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"Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library."

Baker, Nicholson on books - reading
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"When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself."

Baldwin, James on books - reading
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"He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming."

Balfour, Arthur James on books - reading
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"Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear."

Barrett, E.S. on books - reading
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"The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is."

Barrie, Sir James M. on books - reading
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"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 on books - reading
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"The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers."

Barstow, Stan on books - reading
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"Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!"

Baudelaire, Charles on books - reading
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"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
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"Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house."

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
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"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
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"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."

Belloc, Hilaire on books - reading
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"Books are not men and yet they stay alive."

Benet, Stephen Vincent on books - reading
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"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."

Benjamin, Walter on books - reading
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"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."

Benjamin, Walter on books - reading
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"Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man."

Bennett, Arnold on books - reading
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"All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."

Benson, Arthur Christopher on books - reading
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"When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own."

Berger, John on books - reading
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"I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction."

Bevan, Aneurin on books - reading
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"Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable."

Birrell, Augustine on books - reading
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Blackie, Professor on books - reading
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"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is."

Bloom, Allan on books - reading
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"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."

Bradbury, Malcolm on books - reading
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"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

Bradbury, Ray on books - reading
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"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

Brodsky, Joseph on books - reading
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