Our first real adventure does not start with stepping into a new place and breathing the smell of the foreign air. It begins way back when we received our first storybook as a child. Fairy tales and stories of exciting journeys shape our young minds and introduce us to escapades that would later reflect our dreams and aspirations.
It’s proven and tested — to read is to absolutely wander. It deepens our imagination, improves creativity, and instills a productive state of curiosity. By reading we’re encouraged to learn and by learning we develop ourselves with prime knowledge.
We see the world in a new light, not with the harsh realities that surround us but with a brand new hope. With the experience to back it up, we even mold ourselves to possess invaluable wisdom.
Here are 30 reading quotes to encourage you to get back to reading.
Reading Quotes
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. -George R.R. Martin, “A Dance with Dragons”
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. – Chinese Proverb
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
I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. -Dorothy Parker, “The Collected Dorothy Parker”
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. – William Hazlitt
To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries. – A C Grayling, “Financial Times”
The reader became the book, and summer night was like the conscious being of the book. – Wallace Stevens
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. – Paul Sweeney
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. – Confucius
You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry. – E.A. Bucchianeri, “Brushstrokes of A Gadfly”
If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it’s probably because at some level you find ‘reality’ a bit of a disappointment. – Joe Queenan, “One for The Books”
Reading will give you lasting pleasure. – Laura Bush
The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read ‘in the same spirit that the author writ.’… He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison. – C.S. Lewis, “An Experiment in Criticism”
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. – Joseph Addison
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. -B. F. Skinner
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. – Joseph Addison
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. – E.P. Whipple
Book lovers never go to bed alone.
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. – Angela Carter
We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought. – Arthur Helps
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. – Edmund Burke
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. – Logan Pearsall Smith, “Trivia”
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. – Descartes
The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. -Dr. Seuss, “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”
There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all. – Jacqueline Kennedy
The greatest gift is a passion for reading. – Elizabeth Hardwick
You’re never alone when you’re reading a book. – Susan Wiggs
Reading takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. – Hazel Rochman
To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. – Chinese Saying
Share these 30 reading quotes because the time spent on reading is never wasted.