Quotes about books - reading

"What is reading, but silent conversation."

Landor, Walter Savage on books - reading
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"After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else."

Lawrence, D. H. on books - reading   

"One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them."

Lawrence, D. H. on books - reading   

"I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd."

Lawrence, D. H. on books - reading   

"The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine."

Leacock, Stephen B. on books - reading   

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

Lee, Harper on books - reading
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"You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here."

Lee, Spike on books - reading   

"For a good book has this quality, that it is not merely a petrifaction of its author, but that once it has been tossed behind, like Deucalion's little stone, it acquires a separate and vivid life of its own."

Lejeune, Caroline on books - reading   

"I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty."

Levine, Ghita on books - reading   

"There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on books - reading   

"Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on books - reading   

"A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on books - reading   

"A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on books - reading   

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read."

Lincoln, Abraham on books - reading
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"Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

Locke, John on books - reading
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"I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on books - reading   

"Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings --as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on books - reading   

"All books are either dreams or swords."

Lowell, Amy on books - reading
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"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."

Lowell, Amy on books - reading
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"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."

Lowell, James Russell on books - reading   

"What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us."

Lowell, James Russell on books - reading   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Luther, Martin on books - reading   

"In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern."

Lytton, Lord Edward on books - reading   

"A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat."

Maclennan, Hugh on books - reading   

"Everything in the world exists to end up in a book."

Mallarme, Stephane on books - reading   

"A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost always a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices."

Mann, Horace on books - reading
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"The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."

Mansfield, Katherine on books - reading
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"Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness."

Marcel, Anthony on books - reading   

"Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare."

Martineau, Harriet on books - reading   

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

Marx, Groucho on books - reading   

"I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all."

Maugham, W. Somerset on books - reading   

"What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read."

Mccay, James T. on books - reading   

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that."

Mccosh on books - reading
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"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."

McKenna, Richard on books - reading
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"A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new."

Mcluhan, Marshall on books - reading   

"The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading."

Mencken, H. L. on books - reading   

"There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read."

Mencken, H. L. on books - reading
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"There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."

Mencken, H. L. on books - reading   

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent on books - reading   

"This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing."

Miller, Henry on books - reading