{"id":153871,"date":"2023-09-22T14:18:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T14:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/?p=153871"},"modified":"2025-06-13T12:17:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T12:17:41","slug":"reading-quotes-and-aphorisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/reading-quotes-and-aphorisms\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading quotes and aphorisms"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The art of reading<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reading quotes and aphorisms chosen from various very wise and famous writers in order to emphasize the importance of books, of reading and of readers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries.<\/span>
\nRene Descartes <\/span><\/p>\n

Hypocrite reader – my fellow – my brother!<\/span>
\nCharles Baudelaire
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The first thing that reading teaches us is how to be alone.<\/span>
\nJonathan Franzen<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nEzra Pound<\/span><\/p>\n

Read in order to live.<\/span>
\nGustave Flaubert<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t just say that you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better. <\/span>
\nEpictetus<\/span><\/p>\n

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.<\/span>
\nFrancis Bacon<\/span><\/p>\n

The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who has not learned how to learn.<\/span>
\nMark Twain<\/span><\/p>\n

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.<\/span>
\nWalt Disney<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.<\/span>
\nIsaac Disraeli <\/span><\/p>\n

When we are alone and feeling low, a good book can listen to us and we can gather comfort, consolation and strength!<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown<\/span><\/p>\n

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.<\/span>
\nRay Bradbury<\/span><\/p>\n

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!<\/span>
\nWilliam Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use.<\/span>
\nProfessor Blackie<\/span><\/p>\n

You will, I am sure, agree with me that… if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.<\/span>
\nSir Arthur Conan Doyle <\/span><\/p>\n

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.<\/span>
\nUmberto Eco <\/span><\/p>\n

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.<\/span>
\nTryon Edwards <\/span><\/p>\n

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.<\/span>
\nW. Fusselman<\/span><\/p>\n

To live as a vegetable you don\u2019t need to read!<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown<\/span><\/p>\n

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.<\/span>
\nGeorge Eliot <\/span><\/p>\n

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson<\/span><\/p>\n

Never read any book that is not a year old.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson <\/span><\/p>\n

To be a good writer and why not also a passionate reader you must be able to listen to the dead and talk to them.<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading and readers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson <\/span><\/p>\n

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson <\/span><\/p>\n

‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson <\/span><\/p>\n

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.<\/span>
\nCliff Fadiman <\/span><\/p>\n

Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.<\/span>
\nWilliam Faulkner <\/span><\/p>\n

In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.<\/span>
\nEdward G. Bulwer-Lytton<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.<\/span>
\nEdward G. Bulwer-Lytton<\/span><\/p>\n

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.<\/span>
\nLaurence Sterne<\/span><\/p>\n

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading!<\/span>
\nLaurence Sterne<\/span><\/p>\n

Read much, but not many books.<\/span>
\nBenjamin Franklin <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.<\/span>
\nBenjamin Franklin<\/span><\/p>\n

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.<\/span>
\nThomas Carlyle<\/span><\/p>\n

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.<\/span>
\nRobert Frost <\/span><\/p>\n

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.<\/span>
\nEdward Gibbon <\/span><\/p>\n

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.<\/span>
\nOliver Goldsmith <\/span><\/p>\n

The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one.<\/span>
\nSir James Goldsmith<\/span><\/p>\n

I read part of it all the way through.<\/span>
\nSamuel Goldwyn <\/span><\/p>\n

In the dead I always read something new while and in the living I heard telling a thousand times thousands of old things.<\/span>
\nA.F. Doni<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.<\/span>
\nSir Arthur Helps <\/span><\/p>\n

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.<\/span>
\nPaxton Hood<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading aphorisms and quotes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, “The medicines of the soul.”<\/span>
\nPaxton Hood<\/span><\/p>\n

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.<\/span>
\nVictor Hugo <\/span><\/p>\n

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.<\/span>
\nVictor Hugo <\/span><\/p>\n

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.<\/span>
\nHolbrook Jackson<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.<\/span>
\nMortimer J. Adler<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.<\/span>
\nIsaac Asimov<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nGaston Bachelard<\/span><\/p>\n

Readers are fictional characters created by the writers’ imagination. <\/span>
\nAchille Campanile <\/span><\/p>\n

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.<\/span>
\nSamuel Johnson <\/span><\/p>\n

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.<\/span>
\nSamuel Johnson <\/span><\/p>\n

You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.<\/span>
\nCharles “Tremendous” Jones <\/span><\/p>\n

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine – but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.<\/span>
\nSir Arthur Keith<\/span><\/p>\n

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations – such is pleasure beyond compare.<\/span>
\nYoshida Kenko<\/span><\/p>\n

I am a part of everything that I have read.<\/span>
\nJohn Kieran<\/span><\/p>\n

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.<\/span>
\nPeter Kump<\/span><\/p>\n

I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.<\/span>
\nCharles Lamb <\/span><\/p>\n

What is reading, but silent conversation.<\/span>
\nWalter Savage Landor <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading means borrowing.<\/span>
\nGeorg C. Lichtenberg <\/span><\/p>\n

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.<\/span>
\nGeorg C. Lichtenberg <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.<\/span>
\nJohn Locke<\/span><\/p>\n

An author can write a book, but only the readers can make it speak and by voicing it, make people to listen to it.<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.<\/span>
\nJohn Locke<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nHenry Wadsworth Longfellow <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading in a library<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/span>
\nHenry Wadsworth Longfellow <\/span><\/p>\n

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.<\/span>
\nMartin Luther <\/span><\/p>\n

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.<\/span>
\nStephane Mallarme <\/span><\/p>\n

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.<\/span>
\nHarriet Martineau <\/span><\/p>\n

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.<\/span>
\nAnthony Marcel<\/span><\/p>\n

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.<\/span>
\nGroucho Marx <\/span><\/p>\n

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.<\/span>
\nGroucho Marx <\/span><\/p>\n

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it’s also full of fourth-rate readers.<\/span>
\nStan Barstow<\/span><\/p>\n

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.<\/span>
\nLord Henry P. Brougham<\/span><\/p>\n

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.<\/span>
\nW. Somerset Maugham <\/span><\/p>\n

What is important is not to be able to read rapidly, but to be able to decide what not to read.<\/span>
\nJames T. Mccay<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nRichard McKenna<\/span><\/p>\n

A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new.<\/span>
\nMarshall McLuhan <\/span><\/p>\n

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books, is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.<\/span>
\nH. L. Mencken <\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nH. L. Mencken<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.<\/span>
\nH. L. Mencken <\/span><\/p>\n

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet – if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.<\/span>
\nHenry Miller <\/span><\/p>\n

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.<\/span>
\nFriedrich Nietzsche <\/span><\/p>\n

Read good, big important things.<\/span>
\nPeggy Noonan <\/span><\/p>\n

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one’s mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.<\/span>
\nGeorge Orwell <\/span><\/p>\n

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.<\/span>
\nWilliam Penn <\/span><\/p>\n

I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.<\/span>
\nWilliam Lyon Phelps<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The art of readers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.<\/span>
\nWendell Phillips <\/span><\/p>\n

The book you don’t read won’t help.<\/span>
\nJim Rohn <\/span><\/p>\n

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.<\/span>
\nJean Rostand <\/span><\/p>\n

A book worth reading is worth buying.<\/span>
\nJohn Ruskin <\/span><\/p>\n

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.<\/span>
\nJohn Ruskin<\/span><\/p>\n

What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.<\/span>
\nJ. D. Salinger <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.<\/span>
\nArthur Schopenhauer<\/span><\/p>\n

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, “Lighthouses” as the poet said “erected in the sea of time.” They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.<\/span>
\nArthur Schopenhauer <\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.<\/span>
\nCharles de Secondat<\/span><\/p>\n

Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.<\/span>
\nGiorgos Seferis<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I thought of reading – the nice and subtle happiness of reading … this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.<\/span>
\nLogan Pearsall Smith <\/span><\/p>\n

Live always in the best company when you read.<\/span>
\nSydney Smith <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.<\/span>
\nSir Richard Steele<\/span><\/p>\n

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.<\/span>
\nHenry David Thoreau <\/span><\/p>\n

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. At present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.<\/span>
\nHenry David Thoreau <\/span><\/p>\n

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.<\/span>
\nHenry David Thoreau <\/span><\/p>\n

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.<\/span>
\nHenry David Thoreau <\/span><\/p>\n

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.<\/span>
\nJames Thurber<\/span><\/p>\n

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.<\/span>
\nG. M. Trevelyan<\/span><\/p>\n

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.<\/span>
\nMark Twain <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.<\/span>
\nMark Twain<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading the Scriptures is an uplifting experience.<\/span>
\nAuthor Unknown<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>
\nAuthor Unknown<\/span><\/p>\n

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read.<\/span>
\nAuthor Unknown<\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes by authors<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes by arguments<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

To find out more about the importance of reading you can also read:<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading strategies<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On reading by Isaac Disraeli<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Literature and life<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Literary theory<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Thoughts about literature<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The nature and essence of literature<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Best quotes on books<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The Essence of grammar and other texts<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Reading quotes and aphorisms<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Autonomous learning<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Lots of free e-books to download<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Essays with quotes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Quotes by authors<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes by arguments<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Thoughts and reflections<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

News and events<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading quotes and aphorisms chosen from various very wise and famous writers in order to emphasize the importance of books, of reading and of readers. The reading of all good books is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1169,202,1220,33,141,171,25,4061,132],"tags":[1116,2550,1433,2113,2183,3304,1403,1896,1502],"class_list":["post-153871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-creativity","category-culture","category-education","category-english","category-quotes","category-quotes-by-arguments","category-reading","category-the-world-of-english","tag-communication-2","tag-heart","tag-mind","tag-reader","tag-readers","tag-reading","tag-thinking","tag-thought","tag-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t