I’m a collector. I wander, I explore, and I read to pick up new ideas.
Books allow us to view things from new perspectives, to escape or disconnect, and to learn directly from those who have accomplished great feats in life.
The right idea, well explained, can spark our curiosity. As we unlock new information, our paths can change.
That’s why I’ve curated this collection of quotes about reading, to keep it as a handy source of inspiration.
Use it as needed to remind yourself of the power of reading and its benefits.
Quotes About Reading
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
Stephen King
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R.R.
Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.
Jeanette Winterson
What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.
Oprah Winfrey
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
Lemony Snicket
You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.
Paul Rand
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
C.S. Lewis
Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.
Lloyd Alexander
Books are the mirrors of the soul.
Virginia Woolf
We read to know we’re not alone.
William Nicholson
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
John Green
We read to know we’re not alone.
William Nicholson
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Joseph Addison
Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.
Lisa See
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx
Reading for me is spending time with a friend.
Gary Paulsen
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
Carl Sagan
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward Beecher
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
Jane Austen
If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.
J.K. Rowling
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
Kate DiCamillo
I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.
Elbert Hubbard
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
Rene Descartes
Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.
Bill Watterson
Classic′ – a book which people praise and don’t read.
Mark Twain
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
Vera Nazarian
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
Mason Cooley
Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?
Christopher Paolini
I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.
Emma Thompson
For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.
Audrey Hepburn
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot
Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.
George R.R. Martin
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
Orhan Pamuk
Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.
Ben Okri
Reading—the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
William Styron
I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books.
Abraham Lincoln
Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.
Pam Allyn
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Margaret Fuller
The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.
Mark Twain
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.
Cassandra Clare
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Victor Hugo
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper Lee
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
Garrison Keillor
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
William Styron
I am a part of everything that I have read.
Theodore Roosevelt
A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.
Louis L’Amour
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
Abraham Lincoln
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
Sir Francis Bacon
Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.
George R. R. Martin
My alma mater was books, a good library…I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
Malcolm X
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
Voltaire
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.
Walt Disney
You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.
Pat Conroy
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
Fran Lebowitz
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Reading brings us unknown friends.
Honoré de Balzac
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
Louis L’Amour
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
Jane Smiley
I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.
Jim Rohn
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
Fran Lebowitz
We live for books.
Umberto Eco
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer J. Adler
No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.
Sarah J. Maas
Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.
Diane Duane
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
Robert Frost
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
Orhan Pamuk
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
Italo Calvino
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Margaret Fuller
Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.
Diane Duane
The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
The best books…are those that tell you what you know already.
George Orwell
Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.
Malorie Blackman
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Dr. Seuss
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Fernando Pessoa
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
Lemony Snicket
Parting Words
Not only does reading expand our knowledge, but it helps us disconnect. The act of reading itself involves slowing down and focusing deeply.
In this way, reading can be a tool for self-reflection and personal growth.
Which of these quotes about reading resonated most? Let me know!
P.S. If you liked this, you may also enjoy these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Writing
- Quotes About Insight and Revelation
- Walter Benjamin Quotes
- Charles Baudelaire Quotes
- Transcendentalism Quotes
Initially published: July 23, 2023
