“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
—Francis Bacon
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
—Benjamin Franklin
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
—Will Rogers
“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.”
—Maya Angelou
“My mother was right: When you've got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.”
—Jane Birkin
“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
—Steven Wright
“The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.”
—David Bailey
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
—Mark Twain
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
—Henny Youngman
“Any time women come together with a collective intention, it's a powerful thing. Whether it's sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens.”
—Phylicia Rashad
“When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.”
—Hugh Newell Jacobsen
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
—Joseph Addison
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
—René Descartes
“The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful.”
—Taylor Swift
“You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.”
—Zig Ziglar
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
—John Locke
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
—Ray Bradbury
“A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”
—C. S. Lewis
“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves... self-discipline with all of them came first.”
—Harry S Truman
“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.”
—Albert Einstein
“By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.”
—Thomas Merton
“Begin each day with private reading of the Word and prayer.”
—Jim Elliot
“Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.”
—George Washington Carver
“The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”
—Pablo Neruda
“We human beings were never born to read; we invented reading and then had to teach it to every new generation. Each new reader comes to reading with a 'fresh' brain - one that is programmed to speak, see, and think, but not to read.”
—Maryanne Wolf
“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”
—Groucho Marx
“I was reading a book... 'the history of glue' - I couldn't put it down.”
—Tim Vine
“I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings.”
—Susan Cain
“My favorite room in my house is my bedroom; my private space where I can go to do my reading or listen to music.”
—Shirley Ballas
“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.”
—Malorie Blackman
“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
“Children need to get a high-quality education, avoid violence and the criminal-justice system, and gain jobs. But they deserve more. We want them to learn not only reading and math but fairness, caring, self-respect, family commitment, and civic duty.”
—Colin Powell
“Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer
“I hope everyone that is reading this is having a really good day. And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that.”
—Gillian Anderson
“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.”
—Thomas Jefferson
“Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
“In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations.”
—Nikola Tesla
“I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.”
—Rodney Dangerfield
“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”
—Jean Rhys
“It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.”
—Mike Tyson
“A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact. Marcus Garvey No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”
—Mary Wortley
“Montagu Reading is an act of civilization; it's one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.”
—Ben Okri
“I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.”
—Montesquieu
“Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.”
—Maria Montessori
“The greatest gift is a 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
“What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.”
—Charles Bukowski
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
—Oscar Wilde
“I love putting on a candle, reading a book, and just taking a second for me.”
—Jessica Long
“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.”
—Samuel Johnson
