Top 100 Great Reading Quotes
#1. It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
Sydney Smith
#2. Poison Pill is a great reading. The novel ranges from Russian oligarchs to the American worlds of drug research and the equity markets, all of it in a mode of high suspense.
Scott Turow
#4. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.
Max Barry
#5. Sponsored stories are not a great way to monetize mobile traffic. The phone is way more of a publishing tool than a reading tool. The attention users pay to the streams on mobile is far less than on the desktop.
Keith Teare
#6. I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books.
Laurie R. King
#7. Life involves effort and growth. You won't grow by watching a situation comedy, though you can grow by reading a book. I hope we aren't becoming a nation of watchers, because what made us great is that we've always been a nation of doers.
Ronald Reagan
#8. At home, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help. It stirred, delighted, and tormented me.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#9. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold Bloom
#10. My first signing was at my hometown independent bookstore and everyone in the world came. It was so nice. My family was there, my parents, everybody I worked with, all my friends. So I had this great first reading with a like hundred people there.
Sarah Dessen
#11. When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.
Al Pacino
#12. Reading is a choice. The will to do depends the reader. We may or may not do it but when we kill reading, we kill a purposeful mind. Reading a page of a purposeful book per day is not only a great medicine to the mind but also a powerful antidote to ignorance and mediocrity
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#13. Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.
Francois Truffaut
#15. When I was dealing with the eating disorder, I wanted to look like the stick-thin models, but then I started reading fitness magazines and seeing these girls with great bodies that weren't too muscular.
Torrie Wilson
#16. It's a new day: Full of promise and love. The only thing that can take away that great feeling is - reading the news or speaking to people.
Bob Saget
#17. I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.
Evan Hunter
#18. I have a hard time finding something that I really enjoy reading, but I read 'The Great Gatsby' every summer.
Dree Hemingway
#19. Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#20. Reading a book is like going on a great journey. You don't know what'll happen, but something is bound to change. And for me, that change has always been good.
Shannon Hale
#21. Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.
Paul Nurse
#22. I get a glimpse of the mind of many souls from their sacred books.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#23. I really like older writers, perhaps because they take me out of my element. I don't have a great deal of interest in reading a fictionalized present as it's pretty insane as it is.
Henry Rollins
#24. The great thing about reading diverse news from the fields of business, health, science, technology, politics, and more is that you automatically see patterns in the world and develop mental hooks upon which you can hang future knowledge.
Scott Adams
#25. When you read a book [The Hunger Games], you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination. In the book, it's great when she can push a button and food comes up, as per your order.
Nina Jacobson
#26. I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test.
Anna Gavalda
#27. There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.
Patrick Rothfuss
#28. And I think it's because good cons are all based on the victim's need, and the successful con artist is the one, I guess, who can exploit that. I remember reading something about this, that one of the great traits of confidence tricksters is the level that they flatter their victim.
Alfred Molina
#29. Wisdom is not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind, everything else is hearsay.
Joan Erikson
#30. The young are in great danger. Much evil results from their light and trifling reading. Much time is lost which should be spent in useful employment. Some would even deprive themselves of sleep that they might finish some ridiculous love story.
Ellen G. White
#31. If you need proof of how the oral relates to the written, consider that many great novelists, including Joyce and Hemingway, never submitted a piece of work without reading it aloud.
Frank Delaney
#32. Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
Greil Marcus
#33. The effect of reading literary non-fiction that matters most to me is when the coin drops, and this happens in the company of the great, mercuric, encyclopedic minds: Empson, Kenneth Burke, Northrop Frye.
Paul Fry
#34. 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 Truman
#35. The reading of great books has been a life-altering activity to me and, for better or worse, brought me singing and language-obsessed to that country where I make my living. Except for teaching, I've had no other ambition in life than to write books that mattered.
Pat Conroy
#36. C. S. Lewis said it this way: "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."12
Sarah Arthur
#37. Great work doesn't make me jealous; it makes me want to work.
Glen Hirshberg
#38. Reading great works of literature, discovering poetry, and listening to the best composers are all ways that we learn to love the Creator more.
Jennifer A. Marshall
#39. Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience.
Thomas Ehrlich
#40. Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind.
Jennie Chancey
#41. My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.
Pat Conroy
#42. There are some great, subversive female writers out there. Gender should not affect anything. It does, but it shouldn't.
Carla H. Krueger
#43. The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them,..
Stanley Fish
#44. I keep reading about people who want to be famous - it's not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.
Barry Manilow
#45. Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin.
John Green
#46. Reading is one of life's great pleasures; talking about books keeps their worlds alive for longer.
Kate Morton
#47. Other people's creativity inspires me. Seeing great art, or reading a fab book or watching an interesting documentary or an exciting film - these things make me want to let my own imagination fly.
Kate Cary
#48. I was taking my first uncertain steps towards writing for children when my own were young. Reading aloud to them taught me a great deal when I had a great deal to learn. It taught me elementary things about rhythm and pace, the necessary musicality of text.
Mal Peet
#49. This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
#50. From reading of the people I admired - ranging from the soldiers of Valley Forge and Morgan's riflemen to my Southern forefathers and kinfolk - I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world. And I had a great desire to be like them.
Theodore Roosevelt
#51. In great thick dusty books he read
And hardly ever went to bed
Before it was eleven.
- One Day When They Had Settled Down
Mervyn Peake
#52. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Just won my first writing award, thanks to you. To all who took the time to vote for me in 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading, many thanks.
Linda Heavner Gerald
#54. In many ways, the ability to read is the great divide that separates the very young from everyone else. Once we've joined the conspiracy of the literate, once we've crossed over to the land of the reading, everything changes.
Patricia T. O'Conner
#55. Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder
#56. When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.
Terry Hayes
#57. Canada has always been a great place for literature. It's strong and growing stronger, and there will always be reading, and there will always be great writers.
Ruth Ozeki
#58. That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.
Anthony Trollope
#59. I read the writings of great men and women so that I can think bigger thoughts.
Ron Brackin
#60. In this job, there are some simple pleasures that really help you cope. One is books, I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else.
George W. Bush
#61. One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
George W. Bush
#62. The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues - compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious - are far from conventionally heroic.
John Burnside
#63. It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.
Virginia Woolf
#64. I would say that my great political awakening was really born on Okinawa, reading Albert Camus: the "Neither Victims nor Executioners" essay and The Rebel. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I hated myself. I hated my life. I thought nobody wanted me.
Sam Hamill
#65. I've lowered my character with a great deal of unwholesome reading material.
Lisa Kleypas
#66. I found out a long time ago that if I indulged by stuffing my face with great food, lying about reading books and watching TV or talking on the phone, I was not a happy camper.
Raquel Welch
#67. It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well ... problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#68. Being a part of the finesse and physicality of box lacrosse has been a great experience for me. I feel that I have learned and improved as an overall lacrosse player. Learning to adapt in tight space while reading defenders and offensive players has been the biggest improvement in my game.
Paul Rabil
#69. I'm now reading Tertullian, Cyprian, and others of the church fathers with great interest. In some ways they are more relevant to our time than the Reformers, and at the same time they provide a basis for talks between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#70. TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading.
Nic Pizzolatto
#71. Life is short, but art is long. Sophocles is dead, but Oedipus lives on ... Each of us when we read a great piece of literature is a little more human than befor
James W. Sire
#72. I've just been reading about cycling. Yeah, I'm not that great at it but I like the challenge of it.
Joey Santiago
#73. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.
Jane Austen
#74. I always read a lot as a kid and I'd spend long periods of time in my room reading ... I wasn't reading anything great until I got older, but I used to read Agatha Christie mysteries and all of Ian Fleming's 'James Bond' novels.
Michael Riedel
#75. Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people's lives for almost no cost. What a great return!
James Altucher
#76. Reading has always been the great love of my life.
Darren Shan
#77. My historical reading of the situation is that these great monolithic empires developed, Rome, Turkey, and so forth, and they always break down when enough people, and it's always the young, the creative, and minority groups drop out and go back to a tribal form.
Timothy Leary
#79. It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.
Evelyn Underhill
#80. Reading history, one rarely gets the feeling of the true nature of scientific development, in which the element of farce is as great as the element of triumph.
David Gross
#81. Stephen Hawking said he spent most of his first couple of years at Cambridge reading science fiction (and I believe that, because his grades weren't all that great).
Frederik Pohl
#82. A great library cannot be constructed; it is the growth of ages.
John Hill Burton
#83. After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment
Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run.
Hank Williams Jr.
#84. I don't watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I'm reading at the moment 'Freedom,' by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I'm loving it.
Nick Clegg
#85. I just finished reading 'Don't Drink...' in one day. This is a very important and very 'big' book. Bob has bared his soul's journey like no one I can think of, and it's a great story offering great hope at the same time. This book will resonate with intelligent, conscious readers everywhere.
Neville Williams
#86. Reading only a bit of a great book (e.g., Plato's Republic) is like getting engaged but never marrying. The initial experience is pleasurable but can become frustrating if prolonged.
John Reynolds
#87. The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves ... The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.
Harold Bloom
#88. I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is - unsociable hours, plus general creativity.
Jamie Cullum
#89. Books have played a role in almost every one of the world's great civil and human rights movements, but only because people who read them decided to act. Reading brings with it responsibility.
Will Schwalbe
#90. Chilling Tales For Dark Nights, these people or let's say these team is trying to return the fear, the theater... Which so far is great to hear, acting in reading a story and everything one place, just awesome,
Deyth Banger
#91. Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors
we hope
of your life come from reading fiction.
Orson Scott Card
#93. Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.
Robert Reed
#94. A great variety of reading confuses and does not teach. It makes the student like a man who dwells everywhere and, therefore, nowhere in particular.
Martin Luther
#95. Books have immortalized great minds. Books have kept ancients secrets alive. A world which least value books, least value the real essence of wisdom and least know how to preserve what is precious!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#96. Even during my career, when I read all those great things about me, it's almost like I was reading about someone else. It's almost like there was another person.
Willie McCovey
#97. I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.
Keanu Reeves
#98. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker
#99. Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults.
Henri Nouwen
#100. Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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