Quotes on Reading and Books

The instinct for language is imprinted in the genes, a God-given, gene-driven capacity that emerges with life itself.  Literacy, like love, knows no limits.  It is a lifelong journey. Ernest L. Boyer, "Literacy and Learning,"The First R, Every Child's Right to Read

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table. CS LEWIS, on writing for children

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies .... the man who never reads lives only once. George R.R. Martin

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are. Mason Cooley

It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading:
something that will stretch their imaginations,
something that will help them make sense of their own lives,
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own. Katherine Paterson (1932 - )

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. Henry David ThoreauThe reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. Rene Descartes

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
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

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing. Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. Ezra Pound

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring. Raymond Chandler

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. Edmund Burke