Top 100 Reading Not Quotes
#1. Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.
Richard M. Nixon
#2. Books are for reading, not for turning oneself into livestock.
Cassandra Clare
#3. Reading, not just an escape, but an exercise in living ...
Taylor Caldwell
#4. To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.
Virginia Woolf
#5. We reduce the effectiveness of reading interventions when we don't provide our lowest-performing students reading time and encouragement. Developing readers need more reading, not less.
Donalyn Miller
#6. Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.
Mona Simpson
#7. I grew up reading not-serious literature, like comic books and pulp novels, so my instinct is to amuse the reader and entertain.
Kevin Wilson
#8. We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.
LeVar Burton
#9. To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know.
George Spencer-Brown
#10. The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream.
Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination - creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words.
Eric Ripert
#11. I got hit by the bug of reading - not via a person, but via the one-room library in our small town. I remember that the children's books were in the right-hand corner near the floor. Often when I went there, I was the only visitor.
Anita Shreve
#12. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.
C.S. Lewis
#13. Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.
James Madison
#14. We have to tell the American public that they're missing the boat, that they have to get into writing and reading. Not only that, but books won't crash in the year 2000.
Patricia Schroeder
#15. Literacy in North America has historically been focused on reading, not writing; consumption, not production.
Clive Thompson
#16. He knows the conspirators are waiting for a sign from the Sultana to light the fuse, but she has given orders never to disturb her while she is reading, not even if the palace were about to blow up ...
Italo Calvino
#17. I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without experience being food without sustenance.
David Mitchell
#18. There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.
Mark Twain
#19. And, anyway it's not always about fitting in."
"It's not?"
"Nope. Sometimes, it's about reading your environment real quick, and then finding the bits that fit you.
Melissa Keil
#20. There's a limit that you will not be able to go past if you don't understand the importance of reading.
Eric Thomas
#21. I'm not a masochistic reader. If something is just too dense or not enjoyable, even though I'm told it should be good for me, I'll put it down. That said, most of what I read would be considered high-end or good for you, I suppose. But, I also think that reading should be enjoyable.
Josh Radnor
#22. We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children's worth.
Kenneth Keniston
#23. When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.
David Tennant
#24. It was long before I got at the maxim, that in reading an old mathematician you will not read his riddle unless you plough with his heifer; you must see with his light, if you want to know how much he saw.
Augustus De Morgan
#25. It's not simply about reading fairytales as you grow older. It's about still finding the magic in fairytales when the world tells you you're too old to believe either.
Elle Alexander
#26. 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
#27. Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.
Baron De Montesquieu
#28. If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place.
Francis Crick
#29. But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's one of the reasons we enjoy it.
Anthony Horowitz
#30. I'm totally active. I am just this side of hyper. I jog and go to the gym every day. When I'm on the computer, I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm never quiet. My brain is very rarely not engaged. Every now and again I will fall asleep under the parasol in the sun, but that's a rarity.
Suzi Quatro
#31. If you were at school they would not let you read a book like this, they would keep you from reading it by involving you in sport.
Helen DeWitt
#32. The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of
other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity."
Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History
of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99
Roger Lowenstein
#33. How can you not love reading? It's wonderful. An excursion, an adventure ... an escape from reality.' She adored reading and had a hard time grasping anyone not loving it.
Robin Caroll
#34. And we can read - there is always the prospect of escape, through books."
"Books are not a means of 'escape', Meta! Books are a means of knowledge, and of learning how to cope with the future.
Joyce Carol Oates
#35. I'm not big on reading directions. I can't do that. I'm just not from that world.
Richard Dean Anderson
#36. In a country where people are not reading and thinking much, the sun is already set!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#37. I reflected, not for the first or last time, that when you are reading, others think they can disturb you because you are not doing anything.
James Tipton
#38. Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures
John Ruskin
#39. When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'
Julia Glass
#40. It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.
Pam Brown
#41. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading
that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur's life a good one, or Thomas Mann's?
Annie Dillard
#42. The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.
Jo Walton
#43. Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.
Studs Terkel
#44. From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature; not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page.
Jacqueline Woodson
#45. I'm not big on reading business books. I get copies of all of them, because people want me to put a comment on the jacket. Every once in a while, I'll get interested and read one all the way through.
James Goodnight
#46. I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)
Christopher Nolan
#48. I'm not the type who spends his free time in training camp playing with his Playstation or playing cards on trips. The other players thought it was odd: There he is, reading again.
Oliver Kahn
#49. When you're younger and you see something that really speaks to you, it's indelible in a way that's not the same as when you're an adult. So I'll always love reading books and making movies that resonate with young people.
Nina Jacobson
#50. And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.
Vincent Van Gogh
#51. To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.
Robert Maynard Hutchins
#52. As a general rule, I abstain from reading reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.
Abraham Lincoln
#53. I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.
Anita Diament
#54. The point of reading is not reading but living. Reading helps you live with greater appreciation, keener insight and heightened emotional awareness.
Steve Leveen
#55. 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
#56. I read books all the time, I'm always reading. I'm not like somebody that reads really fast or a lot or anything, but I always have a book that I'm reading.
Christopher Owens
#57. We might mean different things. How can you tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to say - not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We're often saying very different things.
Bart D. Ehrman
#58. I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never were, doing things they never did.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#59. Anything John Stott says is worth listening to. Anything he writes is worth reading. Basic Christianity is not only a classic must-read for every believer; it is truly a blessing preserved on the written page for the enrichment of this generation and those to come.
Anne Graham Lotz
#60. Can there be any greater pleasure than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?
Alan Bennett
#61. If you do not throw in a few promises of better things to come, gloomy one, I am going to take you back to the library.
Mason Cooley
#62. The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...
Bruno Bettelheim
#63. I love comics. All I've been doing is reading every day, sitting in the house. Because I've not been feeling too good, so I've been reading and reading.
Jason Mewes
#64. I like reading reviews. If they're clearly hating on you, I try not to read that deeply. But if they really are trying to understand, it's interesting.
Jon Favreau
#65. I do not feel obliged in my reading. I read to be entertained and to relax, and to go into another world, not because it's good for me.
Nora Roberts
#66. Reading is not work, not a chore, not a drudgery; reading is the most joyful thing, yet, in the world.
James Patterson
#67. For me, the reading of the scriptures is not the pursuit of scholarship. Rather, it is a love affair with the word of the Lord and that of His prophets.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#69. I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Ayn Rand
#70. When you're reading, you're laughing and not quite noticing what's happening. One second you're still kind of chuckling, and then all of sudden you're in the third act of the book and in this very dark and claustrophobic place.
Moshe Kasher
#71. At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#72. I want to read what you're thinking. I'm pretty sure it's not about housekeeping.
Kathryn Stockett
#73. There are far more a worst crimes than burning books ... Not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
#74. People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.
Jonathan Ames
#75. It is important to take the seriousness out of things that do not deserve it. Take the seriousness out of it, and the thing loses its power.
S.A. Tawks
#76. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus
Adolf Hitler
#77. The mind must be developed by you alone. There is no way for others to do the work and for you to reap the results. Reading someone else's blueprint of mental progress will not transfer its realizations to you. You have to develop them yourself.
Dalai Lama
#78. Education is what you get from reading the small print; experience is
what you get from not reading it.
Common
#79. Society has definitely gotten to the point where everybody has to comment on anything, and if you want to stay sane as a performer, you're better off not reading that stuff.
Doug Benson
#80. No harm in listening. Alexei's a child, not a wizard. We don't lose control of our brains by listening.
Katherine Rundell
#81. I'm not sure that when I read 'Treasure Island' for the first time, when I was about 10, I understood all the words or what was going on. But that didn't stop me reading it, and I certainly didn't forget it.
Mal Peet
#82. I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike.
Margaret Atwood
#83. The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand naturally in the ranks, and try yourself out, but education is just reading and understanding what you read.
William Monahan
#84. It was best not to ask Pepe if reading or Jesus had saved him, or which one had saved him more.
John Irving
#85. I am not read well, but when I do read, I read well.
Kurt Cobain
#86. You can learn from a glance at anyone's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.
Alan Bradley
#87. The Christians think I am making a mistake by not trying the New Testament and meeting Jesus. The Jews tend to think I am making a mistake by reading without support from educated people. After all, there is 2,000 years of scholarship about the book, they say, so it's perverse of me to ignore it.
David Plotz
#88. I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.
William Hazlitt
#89. Seems to me there's not much time to read about other people's lives and live your own while you're at it. If I have to choose, and I reckon I do, I'll choose living my own life over reading summat about someone else's.
Sophie Hannah
#90. My books are not generic. You know when you're reading a Joy Fielding book.
Joy Fielding
#91. She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.
Cassandra Clare
#92. When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a luxury; it was essential.
Azar Nafisi
#93. One becomes a theologian by living, by dying, and by being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculation.
Martin Luther
#95. Let the enemy fall by their swords. Words not worth reading die their own death. But our Words will be Told!
K.A. Gunn
#96. When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all that, not knowing it wasn't my reading level.
Stephenie Meyer
#97. Everywhere I go, kids walk around not with books under their arms, but with radios up against their heads. Children can't read or write, but they can memorize whole albums.
Jesse Jackson
#99. Somebody's going to be reading, right? Wrong. They're FBing. Doing a Number Two. Maybe I shouldn't have had those chilli peppers. Hope y'all having a good day! - Coming from a toilet not far from you. xxxx
Hope Barrett
#100. We treasure the word of God not only by reading the words of the scriptures, but by studying them. We may be nourished more by pondering a few words, allowing the Holy Ghost to make them treasures to us, than to pass quickly and superficially over whole chapters of scripture.
Henry B. Eyring
