reading - quotes

Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860

was a German philosopher

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.

William Walker, 1623-1684

was a schoolmaster and author of works on grammar and rhetoric

Learn to read slow: all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.

( “The Art of Reading” )

Aldous (Leonard) Huxley, 1894-1963

was an English critic and novelist

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly — they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.

( “Brave New World”, 1932 )

Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

was an US Transcendentalist author

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Sydney Smith, 1771-1845

was an English essayist

Live always in the best company when you read.

(Dr) Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784

was an English author, critic, and lexicographer

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

(Lloyd) Logan Pearsall Smith, 1865-1946

was an American-born essayist and critic

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

( “Afterthoughts”, “Myself”, 1931 )

Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

was an US (German-born) physicist

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.

James Baldwin, 1924-1987

was an US author

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

Ezra (Weston Loomis) Pound, 1885-1972

was an US poet

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.