Inspirational Quotes on Reading

“Multifarious reading weakens the mind more than doing nothing, for it becomes a necessity, at last, like smoking: and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream over unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of all idleness, and leaves more of impotency than any other.”

“I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, and never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed, like the iron atoms of the blood, into my mental constitution.”

“There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.”

“The mere brute pleasure of reading is the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.”

“Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.”

“When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to act, we cannot bear a provoking word.”

“It is well to remember that reading books about the Bible is a very different thing to searching the Word for oneself.”

“Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.”

“Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment.”

“In the meantime the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ work with thee, gentle reader, in all thy studious readings.”

“I read the newspapers to see how God governs the world.”

“In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.”

“You can't develop character by reading books. You develop it from conflict.”

“We read of preaching the Word out of season, but we do not read of praying out of season, for that is never out of season.”

“If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.”

“That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience, is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveler exceeds that which is got by reading.”

“If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.”

“The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity one has to meet every day.”

“Many of the comments on life which people get out of Shakespeare could have been reached by very moderate talents without his assistance.”

“In general the unliterary do not read poetry. A growing number of those who are in other respects literary do not read poetry. And modern poetry is read by very few who are not themselves poets, professional critics, or teachers of literature.”