Reading Quotes - Page 8

• Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

  James Russell Lowell

  Book, Mind, Library

  1849 'Nationality in Literature', in the North American Review, Jul.

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• There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of.

  John Herschel

  Dream, Character, Men

  John Herschel (2014). “Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews”, p.13, Cambridge University Press

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• A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  People, Friendly, Pages

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.87

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• From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Book, Thoughtful, Choices

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Men, Light

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.209

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• People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Men, People

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.211

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• Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Made, Duty, Disagreeable

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• A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Book, Library, Bed

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• When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Book, Science, Numbers

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• One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

  E. M. Forster

  Book, Writing, Long

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

  Heinrich Heine

  Book, Evil, Library

  Almansor: A Tragedy l. 245 (1823)

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• A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

  Aldous Huxley

  Book, Writing, Soul

  Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 13

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• Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

  Helen Keller

  Friendship, Sweet, Book

  "The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller, (Ch. 21), 1903.

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  You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

  C. S. Lewis

  Book, Long, Tea

  "On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature".

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• Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Beer, Firsts

  1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,'Sunday'.

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• Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Children, Growing Up, Book

  Henry Ward Beecher (1862). “Eyes and Ears”, p.156

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• There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.

  Jacqueline Woodson

  Dream, People, African American

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• We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Art, Book, Want

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.245

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• A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

  Joseph Addison

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The British Essayists: Containing the Spectator, with Notes and General Index, and the Tatler and Guardian, with Notes and General Index”

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• Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.

  Charles Lamb

  Needs, Ears, Milton

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia”, p.192

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• Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

  Charles Lamb

  Queens, Book, Thinking

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• Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1872). “Kavanagh: And Other Pieces”, p.364

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• Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,--a real, not an imaginary,--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Attention, Kind

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.455, Cambridge University Press

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• Uncertain whose the narrowest span,--the clown unread, or half-read gentleman.

  John Dryden

  Gentleman, Half, Clown

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• The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Running, Class, Glasses

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