You know our goal at Bookroo is to help you spend less time searching for books so you can spend more time reading! That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the 100 best quotes about reading. Read on to see the many insightful, witty, and motivating things that have been said about reading by authors, poets, scientists, artists, visionaries and even comedians.
Let us know in the comments below which is your favorite, and what quotes you would add to the list!
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” — Harper Lee
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” — Lemony Snicket
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” — C.S. Lewis
“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx
“‘Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read.” — Mark Twain
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury
“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” — Roald Dahl
“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” — Fran Lebowitz
“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.” — Lena Dunham
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” — Jhumpa Lahiri
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” — Descartes
“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
“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” — Diane Duane
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss
“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” — Malorie Blackman
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King
“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” — Orhan Pamuk
“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” — Logan Pearsall Smith
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller
“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” — Saul Bellow
“A good book is an event in my life.” — Stendhal
“Reading brings us unknown friends” — Honoré de Balzac
“The world was hers for the reading.” — Betty Smith
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” — Louis L’Amour
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” — Fernando Pessoa
“No. I can survive well enough on my own—if given the proper reading material.” — Sarah J. Maas
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Walt Disney
“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” — Jules Verne
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Cicero
“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” — Malcolm X
“It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.” — Maureen Corrigan
“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” — Arnold Lobel
“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat.” — E. Nesbit
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” — Carl Sagan
“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” — Roald Dahl
“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” — Ezra Pound
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” — P.J. O’Rourke
“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” — Jane Smiley
“Beware of the person of one book.” — Thomas Aquinas
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” — Abraham Lincoln
“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” — C.S. Lewis
“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
“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” — Frederick Douglas
“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.” — Austin Phelps
““You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me.” — Strickland Gillilan
“The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.” — Mark Twain
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo
“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!” — Betty Smith
“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” — Garrison Keillor
“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” — Dr. Seuss
“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” — Napoléon Bonaparte
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” — Italo Calvino
“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges
“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” — Mary Schmich
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” — Mary Wortley Montagu
“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” — Emma Thompson
“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.” — Roald Dahl
“That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.” — Aphra Behn
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” — W. Somerset Maugham
“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” — Bill Watterson
“These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” — Roald Dahl
“I guess there are never enough books.” — John Steinbeck
“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.” — Voltaire
“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” — J.K. Rowling
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” — Anne Herbert
“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” — Emilie Buchwald
“I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” — H.P. Lovecraft
“Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.” — E.B. White
“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.” — David Levithan
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” — Albert Einstein
“I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.” — Patrick Rothfuss
“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson
“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.” — Edgar Allan Poe
“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” — Henry Ward Beecher
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” — Woody Allen
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” — Joseph Brodsky
“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” — Maya Angelou
“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
“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” — Carl Sagan
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” — Socrates
“For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.” — Audrey Hepburn
“Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.” — Gary Paulsen
“[F]rom the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” — Gordon B. Hinckley
“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.” — Voltaire
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” — Mortimer J. Adler
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” — C.S. Lewis
“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.” — Arthur Conan Doyle
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright.” — Gustave Flaubert
“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.” — Wisława Szymborska
“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” — Holbrook Jackson
“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild to pick up a book and read to a child.” — Anita Merina
“Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.” — David Quammen
“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be offered as a gift.” — Kate DiCamillo
110 Quotes About Reading
110 Quotes About Reading
image via shutterstock
All book lovers and avid readers know the true power of a good book and the experience that comes along with it. For those who can’t keep their noses out of a book here are the best quotes about reading to further your love for the beloved hobby.
Freedom & Adventure
“I’ve always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.” –Taylor Jenkins Reid (Here are 10 books like Daisy Jones & The Six for your #TBR pile >>)
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass
“There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy
“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King (Discover 10 Books like Stephen King’s Dark Tower series >>)
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen
“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.” – Roberto Bolaño
“Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape — I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read.” – Christian Bauman
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan
“The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith (Here are 6 nonfiction books about trail-blazing women >>)
“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.” – Charles Baudelaire
“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.” – Roald Dahl
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” – Anna Quindlen
“Reading… a vacation for the mind… ” – Dave Barry (Escape into these 12 amazing novels about books >>)
“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” – Joyce Carol Oates
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin (Here are the books you should be reading if you love Game of Thrones >>)
“Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.” – Stephen King
“Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.” – Lloyd Alexander
“Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.” – Alberto Manguel
“Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it.” – Alan Bennett
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”―Virginia Woolf
“I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.” – Ruta Sepetys
“Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education.” – Donalyn Miller
“We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.” – John Lubbock
“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.” – Jeanette Winterson
“It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” – S.I. Hayakawa
Here are the best gifts for booklovers >>
Wisdom
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde
“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 William Elliot
“What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.”–Oprah (Discover books like Oprah’s What Happened to You? >>)
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” – C.S. Lewis
“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” – John Locke
“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell (These 8 books like 1984 will keep you up at night! >>)
“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” – Napoléon Bonaparte
“I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.”—J.K. Rowling (Here are 11 books to read if you love Harry Potter >>)
“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” – Alberto Manguel
“Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.” – Walter Moers
“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.” – Lawrence Durrell
“When you educate a woman, you set her free. Had I not had books and education in Mississippi, I would have believed that’s all there was.” –Oprah (Find all of Oprah’s famous Book Club picks here! >>)
“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.” – Paul Rand
Here are the banned books everyone should read >>
Necessity
“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.” – George R.R. Martin
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.” – Annie Dillard
“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
“I can survive well enough on my own – if given the proper reading material.” – Sarah J. Maas
“Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.” – Toni Morrison (Here’s what to read if you love Toni Morrison >>)
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” – Joseph Addison
“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” – Edmund Burke
“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” – Jacqueline Kelly
“Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the reader.”―Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reading is my inhale, and writing is my exhale. – Glennon Doyle (Here are 8 books for Love Warrior fans >>)
“’Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver,’ she had once said. ‘Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.’” – Alan Bradley
“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.” – Sherman Alexie
“And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” – David McCullough Jr.
“Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” – Ruth Rendell
“Books are both our luxuries and our daily bread.” – Henry Stevens
Humorous & Nostalgic
Don’t miss 17 quotes about reading from Dr. Seuss >>
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Joseph Brodsky
“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. Alder
“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” – Diane Duane
“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”―Eleanor Roosevelt
“A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.” – François Mauriac
“Reading brings us unknown friends.” – Honoré Balzac
“I’ve always ready to figure out people more, and that includes good people and bad people.” –Gillian Flynn (Here are 8 books sure to be the next Gone Girl >>)
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” – Fernando Pessoa
“What a blessing it is to love books as I love them; to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!” – Thomas Babington Macaulay
“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” – Louis L’Amour
“Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.”―Gloria Steinem
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham
“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read.” – Lemony Snicket
“Take a good book to bed with you – books do not snore.” – Thea Dorn
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” – Mary Wortley Montagu
“I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.” – Benedict Cumberbatch
“We are all unreliable narrators–all of us.”–Ruth Ware (Love Ruth Ware? Check out these classic thrillers for suspense junkies >>)
“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.” – Lisa Kleypas
“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” – Lisa See
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” – René Descartes
“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’” – Helen Exley
“My life is a reading list.” – John Irving
“Literature is my Utopia” – Helen Keller
“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” – Harold Bloom
“To know a man’s library is, in some measure, to know a man’s mind.” – Geraldine Brooks
“It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book… from the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.” – Jane Austen (Here are the best Jane Austen retellings >>)
“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.” – Henry Miller
“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” – Holbrook Jackson
“Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.” – John Waters
“I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page.” – Naomi Shihab Nye
“Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.” – Neil Gaiman (What novels to read if you love comics >>)
“What a blessing it is to love books.” – Elizabeth von Arnim
“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.” – Gaston Bachelard
“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”―Maya Angelou (See an essential Maya Angelou reading list here >>)
“I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough… the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.” – John Adams
“I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.” – Elbert Hubbard
“The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much.” – Josh Lanyon
“Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.” – Louisa May Alcott (Check out this amazing modern retelling of Little Women >>)
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” – Harry Truman
“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” – Emma Thompson
“He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” – William Godwin
“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.” – Chef Eric Ripert (Check out these 8 cookbooks for forming healthy habits this year >>)
“Reading is a gift. It’s something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape.” – Richard Carlson
“I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.” – Montesquieu
“Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes.” – A.L. Kennedy
“When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly.” – Chloe Thurlow
“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.” – Boris Pasternak
“The world belongs to those who read.” – Rick Holland
“This week I’ve been reading a lot and doing little work. That’s the way things ought to be. That’s surely the road to success.” – Anne Frank
Recommend These Reads:
Related Posts
Page load link
Go to Top
Quotes tagged as «reading»
Showing 1-30 of 7,011
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
―
A Dance with Dragons
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
―
Lemony Snicket,
Horseradish
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“We read to know we’re not alone.”
―
William Nicholson,
Shadowlands
“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,
The Fault in Our Stars
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
―
Oscar Wilde
“The more that 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!
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
―
Groucho Marx
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
―
J.D. Salinger,
The Catcher in the Rye
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
―
Oscar Wilde
“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,
Pride and Prejudice
“′Classic′ — a book which people praise and don’t read.”
―
Mark Twain
“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”
―
John Green,
An Abundance of Katherines
“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
―
Cassandra Clare,
Clockwork Angel
“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
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
―
Harper Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
―
William Styron,
Conversations with William Styron
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
―
C.S. Lewis
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
―
Stephen King
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
―
Ray Bradbury
“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
“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
―
George R. R. Martin
“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
―
Voltaire
“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
―
Sir Francis Bacon
“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,
The Prince of Tides
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
―
James Baldwin
“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
―
Tahereh Mafi,
Shatter Me
Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous
old reading quotes, reading sayings, and reading proverbs, collected over the years from a variety
of sources.
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
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.
Abraham Lincoln
A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
Abraham Lincoln
The more you read, the more you learn, the more you learn, the smarter you are.
Dr T.P.Chia
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.
Harper Lee
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R.R. Martin
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Dr. Seuss
The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.
Mark Twain
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Margaret Fuller
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
Mason Cooley
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Richard Steele
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.
Paul Auster
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
C.S. Lewis
Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.
Maxim Gorky
A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
Charles de Montesquieu
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him, and travel in his company.
Andre Gride
Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.
Brad Henry
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
Jean Rhys
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
Emilie Buchwald
Those who have trouble reading are those who have trouble moving ahead in the appreciation of all that life has to offer.
Byron Pulsifer
Reading a book by someone you respect allows some of their brilliance to rub off on you.
Robin Sharma
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold Bloom
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Rene Descartes
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.
Benjamin Disraeli
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
Anthony Trollope
What is reading but silent conversation?
Walter Savage Landor
If you buy an item via this post, we may get a small affiliate fee. Details.
The quotes about books you’ll see below are not the most famous ones. All of them, however, are highly motivating to rediscover the pleasure of reading.
You may ask, what book quotes have to do with the ebook site. Ebook sites are still mostly focused on the issues related to technology rather than pleasures of reading.
We believe that a reader has to learn only as much technology as it’s needed to fully enjoy the magic of reading. Reading in times of digital content is changing, but it doesn’t mean it gives less pleasure. Just the opposite.
There is absolutely no difference between a hardcover book or an audiobook or a multimedia book application. There is no difference between a high-quality paper and e-ink screen or a high-resolution Retina display.
The biggest pleasure comes from what we read, not from on what we read.
The real difference, though, lies in our attitude to reading. Gilbert K. Chesterton once said: “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.”
If you believe there are great quotes that should be added to the list, don’t hesitate to reach us on social media with your recommendations. Thanks!
50 best quotes about books and reading
1
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
– Stephen King
This beautiful book quote was beautifully visualized by Risa Rodil. You can get the artwork from Redbubble, on a variety of products. Besides a number of posters, you can have iPad and iPhone cases, mugs, wall clocks, and even a duvet cover! And, yes, apparel is here, too.
⇢ Redbubble
2
No two persons ever read the same book.
– Edmund Wilson
3
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
– Vera Nazarian
4
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
5
I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.
– Woodrow Wilson
6
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
– Mason Cooley
This famous quote by Mason Cooley is visualized to look like a handwritten text on a page from a dictionary. Artwork by My Printable Art Shop, available as an instant download in a quality good enough for an 8×10-inch poster.
⇢ Etsy
7
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
– P.J. O’Rourke
8
Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.
– Author Unknown
9
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
– Harold Kushner
10
There is no friend as loyal as a book.
– Ernest Hemingway
A minimalist design from Instant Quotes features one of the most famous quotes about books. There is no better friend than a book, and there is no better way to express it than on a wall.
⇢ Etsy
11
There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.
– Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
12
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
– Maya Angelou
13
You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books and that’s kind of the same thing.
– Anonymous
You can’t buy happiness but you can buy a book poster, and that’s kind of the same thing.
⇢ Redbubble
14
The book you don’t read won’t help.
– Jim Rohn
15
Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.
– John Green
16
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
– Haruki Murakami
A minimalist and stylish visualization of Murakami’s bright thought on how reading makes us exceptional.
⇢ Etsy
17
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
18
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
19
A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.
– Neil Gaiman
This inspiring quote by Neil Gaiman is worth repeating every day. What about placing it in your bedroom right in front of your bed? You’ll see it when you open your eyes, or right before you’ll close them.
⇢ Etsy
20
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.
– Salman Rushdie
21
In a good book the best is between the lines.
– Swedish Proverb
22
Are we not like two volumes of one book?
– Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
23
We lose ourselves in books. We find ourselves there too.
– Anonymous
This anonymous book quote became extremely popular thanks to the famous illustrator Risa Rodil. Just like other designs she offers on Redbubble, this brilliant artwork is offered on several accessories and clothes.
⇢ Redbubble
24
Keep reading books, but remember that a book is only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.
– Maxim Gorky
25
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
– Oscar Wilde
26
So many books, so little time.
– Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa is the author of one of the most famous quotes about books. It’s been featured on a large number of designs. We picked the one created by Abbie Imagine, and you can get as a poster printed on high quality 192 gsm archival matte paper.
⇢ Etsy
27
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
– Marcel Proust
28
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
– Oscar Wilde
29
Beware of the person of one book.
– Thomas Aquinas
30
Between the pages of a book is a wonderful place to be.
– Anonymous
A lovely flower typographic poster designed by Stella Bookish Arts is available on t-shirts, iPhone cases, travel mugs, tote bags and over thirty other items.
⇢ Redbubble
31
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.
– Edward P. Morgan
32
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
– Oscar Wilde
How do you enjoy this book quote poster designed by Blue Poppy Gallery? Oscar’s Wilde quotes is printed on a randomly selected page from a vintage dictionary, and it fits in 8 × 10-inch frames.
⇢ Etsy
33
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
– W. Somerset Maugham
34
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
– Dr. Seuss
Isn’t it one of these quotes that made our childhood a happy and inspiring time? A passage from I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! by Dr. Seuss was visualized by Dune Studio, and you can download it from Etsy in a quality matching posters from 5 × 7 to 16 × 20 inches.
⇢ Etsy
35
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.
– Angela Carter
36
There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.
– Gail Carson Levine
37
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”
– Helen Exley
This typographic art print was designed by Sacred and Profane and features a bold quote by Helen Exley on how a book can change people’s lives. The poster is available in two sizes, A4 or A3, but you can also order a custom size.
⇢ Etsy
38
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
– C.S. Lewis
39
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
40
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the book quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson on a beautifully bright artwork created by Poster Inspired.
⇢ Etsy
41
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
– Abraham Lincoln
42
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
– C.S. Lewis
43
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
– C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis is the author of several meaningful quotes about books and reading, and we feature a few of them in this list. The one shown above is beautifully designed by Violet and Alfie. You can get it in one of four colors.
⇢ Etsy
44
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
– Henry Ward Beecher
45
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
– William Styron
46
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
– Henry David Thoreau
Printable Wisdom offers on Etsy a stylishly designed quote by Henry David Thoreau, which will be a perfect decor for a home library.
⇢ Etsy
47
One always has a better book in one’s mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
– Michael Cunningham
48
I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
– William Lyon Phelps
49
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
– Oscar Wilde
50
There comes a time when you have to choose between turning the page and closing the book.
– Josh Jameson
When there comes a time you decide to hang your favorite book quote on a wall, make sure to check out the artwork from The Writing Craft. This quote by Josh Jameson is available on over 40 products: apparel, home decor, personal accessories, and more.
⇢ Redbubble
51
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
– Joseph Brodsky
52
What you don’t know would make a great book.
– Sydney Smith
53
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
54
I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.
– Jorge Luis Borges
55
We read to know that we are not alone.
– William Nicholson
A quote from William Nicholson’s play Shadowlands was turned by Three Gypsy Souls into a catchy artwork. Available as an instant download.
⇢ Etsy
56
Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
– Ezra Pound
57
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
58
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
– Frederick Douglas
A motivational book poster with a quote by Frederick Douglas. The typographic layout was designed by Prints & Designs. You can get it as an instant download so that you could print and frame it the way you want.
⇢ Etsy
59
Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.
– J.K. Rowling
60
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
– Alan Bennett
61
I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.
– Neil Gaiman
Don’t say you wouldn’t like this beautiful quote on a t-shirt, throw pillow or a mug. Yes, this highly recognizable design comes from Risa Rodil.
⇢ Redbubble
62
It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read.
– Judy Blume
63
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
– Toni Morrison
64
A good book has no ending.
– R.D. Cumming
And the last beautiful quote about books turned into a beautiful visual. Hand-lettered by Teri Lea Wright, this 8×10 typographic poster is printed on high-quality matte photo paper.
⇢ Etsy
• • •
Where to buy posters with book quotes
There are many sites where you can order your favorite book quote printed on a poster, mug, t-shirt, and tons of other products.
Below you’ll find our recommendations – the sites that offer high-quality book quote designs on a large selection of items.
Amazon Handmade – if you don’t want to sign up to other online stores, you can start exploring Amazon’s own section with handcrafted items. It’s quickly growing, and you’ll find here posters, home decor, and stationery – also with book quotes.
Redbubble – a marketplace for custom-designed items, including prints, stationery, cases & covers, or t-shirts. Opposite to other sites, such as CafePress, the quality of artwork is very high.
Zazzle – the site offers a huge variety of merchandise, from clothing, to home decor, to personal accessories. What’s more, users can upload their own image and create their own design.
Etsy – it’s the top destination for anyone who wants to express the love for books. The largest marketplace with handcrafted goods offers thousands of literary quotes – on posters, jewelry, personal items, electronic accessories, and clothes.
• • •
We removed a comment system to increase your privacy and reduce distractions. Let’s discuss this article in your WordPress Reader, or on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow us on Google News.
Keep exploring. Here are more lists and tips for book lovers:
Jane Austen books – free ebook and audiobook downloads
– January 30, 2023
10 most interesting books that enter the public domain in 2023
– December 20, 2022
These 20 most gifted books will make perfect gifts in 2023
– December 9, 2022
16 best Kindle Scribe covers for work and pleasure (2023 roundup)
– November 28, 2022
14 premium but inexpensive Kindle 11 case covers (2023 edition)
– November 21, 2022