reading

reading

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them. Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. Pride and Prejudice
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. The Catcher in the Rye
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. Don Quixote
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's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. Brave New World
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. How Reading Changed My Life
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read. Journey to the Centre of the Earth
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you. The Shadow of the Wind
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. The Picture of Dorian Gray
A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. Skeleton Crew
Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. Books and You
Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.
Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't. Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly
The best books... are those that tell you what you know already. 1984
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on. Timequake
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.
I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
I am a part of everything that I have read.
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE The Adventures of Huck Finn
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.
When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved. The Prince and the Pauper
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
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. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.
Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. The Power of Myth
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings? Madame Bovary
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. Works of Samuel Johnson
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed. The New Life
I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.
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."
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.