Quotes about reading
116 quotes from 88 people
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)- Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (14 July 1763) p. 121
Pray thee, take care, that tak’st my book in hand,
To read it well: that is, to understand.
Ben Jonson1572–1637Epigrams- Ben Jonson1572–1637To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (First Folio, 1623), lines 22-24
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 1, Ch. 2 (Scout)
Stanisław Lem1921–2006“Pirx’s Tale” in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)Parents should leave books lying around marked “forbidden” if they want their children to read.
Doris Lessing1919–2013Interview with Amanda Craig, “Grand dame of letters who’s not going quietly”, The Times (London, 23 November 2003, reprinted 3 June 2004)Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Dedication: “To Lucy Barfield”I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932); in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 1914–1963 (1979), p. 439Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)What is more important in a library than anything else — is the fact that it exists.
Archibald MacLeish1892–1982“The Premise Of Meaning” in American Scholar (5 June 1972)
