reading

I love to read, once i open a book I'm interested in, it's near impossible to get me to put it down, & my eyes have to actually be physically unopenable to make me stop at night. Reading is an irreplaceable form of self-development & once you discover the joy of reading, you'll never want to stop. I found some really good quotes on reading which I liked, maybe they'll appeal to the reader in you as well...


I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. ~ Malcolm X ~

It is with books as with men - a very small number play a great part, the rest are lost in the multitude. ~ Voltaire ~

I've traveled the world twice over, Met the famous; saints and sinners, Poets and artists, kings and queens, Old stars and hopeful beginners, I've been where no-one's been before, Learned secrets from writers and cooks All with one library ticket To the wonderful world of books. ~ Unknown ~

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

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,
~ Joseph Addison ~

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. ~ Joseph Addison ~

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~ Joseph Addison ~

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. ~ Mortimer J. Adler ~

That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit.
~ Amos Bronson Alcott ~

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. ~ Francis Bacon ~

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
~ E.S. Barrett ~

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 ~

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

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. ~ Walter Benjamin ~

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodsky ~

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.(1994) ~ Emilie Buchwald ~

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you. ~ Richard De Bury ~

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been-- it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. ~ Thomas Carlyle ~

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading. ~ Rufus Choate ~

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man: nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead. ~ Clarence Day ~

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

To read is to empower To empower is to write To write is to influence To Influence is to change To change is to live. ~ Jane Evershed ~

If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all. ~ Francois FéNelon ~

When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day. ~ Jean Fritz ~

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
~ Elizabeth Hardwick ~

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions. ~ John Ruskin ~

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Atwood H. Townsend ~