Reading books has always been one of the most popular pastimes in the world. It is a great way to escape reality, learn new things, and gain different perspectives. For centuries, people have been quoting famous authors and thinkers about the importance of reading books. Here are some of the best quotes about reading books that every reader should know.
Best Quotes For Book Readers
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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
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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
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
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
Quotes On Books Reading
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
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
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
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
Quotes On Reading Books
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. ― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
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Books were safer than other people anyway. ― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Reality doesn’t always give us the life that we desire, but we can always find what we desire between the pages of books. ― Adelise M. Cullens
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, A Reading Diary
You can get lost in any library, no matter the size. But the more lost you are, the more things you’ll find. ― Millie Florence, Lydia Green Of Mulberry Glen
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
I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud. ― Nnedi Okorafor
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you. ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
The whole world opened to me when I learned to read. ― Mary McLeod Bethune
I believe there is power in words, power in asserting our existence, our experience, our lives, through words. ― Jesmyn Ward, The Fire this Time
Once I began to read, I began to exist. I am what I read. ― Walter Dean Myers, Open a World of Possible
Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
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
You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I’ve read a book, I don’t feel like I’ve finished anything. So I start a new one. ― Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul
Read. Read. Read. Just don’t read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different style. ― R.L. Stine
In the end, we’ll all become stories. ― Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. ― Khaled Hosseini
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else. ― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
A well-read woman is a dangerous creature. ― Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas
The problem with books is that they end. ― Caroline Kepnes, You
In principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder. ― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. ― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Read Books Quotes
Sleep is good, he said, and books are better. – George R.R. Martin
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
The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night. – Isabel Allende
When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. – Erasmus
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
I love the smell of book ink in the morning. – Umberto Eco
It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially. – Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. – Neil Gaiman
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. – Charles Baudelaire
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading. – William Styron
The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. – Kurt Vonnegut
I love books. I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud. – Nnedi Okorafor
Books were my pass to personal freedom. – Oprah Winfrey
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. – David Mitchell
If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. – Francois Mauriac
Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories. – Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
The best books… are those that tell you what you know already. – George Orwell, 1984
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
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
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. – Anne Lamott
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
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. – Ursula K. LeGuin
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
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
Happiness. That’s what books smells like. Happiness. That’s why I always wanted to have a book shop. What better life than to trade in happiness? – Saran MacLean
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
Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. – Annie Proulx
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. – Jean Rhys
We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind. – Anna Quindlen
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. – Joseph Addison
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read. – Jorge Luis Borges
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. – Abraham Lincoln
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
Reading—the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay. – William Styron
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. – Ursula K. LeGuin
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them. – George Saunders
Reading—even browsing—an old book can yield sustenance denied by a database search. – James Gleick
I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time. – Virginia Woolf
Reading means borrowing. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds. – Roxane Gay
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours. – Alan Bennett, The History Boys
It wasn’t until I started reading and found books they wouldn’t let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else. – John Waters
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. – Sir Francis Bacon
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
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. – Voltaire
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. – Robert Frost
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
A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting. – Walter Mosley
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 word after a word after a word is power. – Margaret Atwood
Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers. – Steven Spielberg
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. – Annie Dillard
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. – John Locke
Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window. – William Faulkner
Reading is my favorite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read. – Anne Brontë
Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape — I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read. – Christian Bauman
Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. – A.S. Byatt, Possession
If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories. – Michael Ende
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. – Oscar Wilde
I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can’t really put a book on the Internet. – Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
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
Reading is departure and arrival. – Terri Guillemets
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. – President Harry Truman
So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone. – Roald Dahl, Matilda
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry. – Cassandra Clare
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
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them. – Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
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
Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times?” Mo had said…”As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells…and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower…both strange and familiar. – Cornelia Funke, Inkspell
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own. – John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. – Nora Ephron
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. – Robertson Davies
Leaders are always readers. – Kevin Trudeau
Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. – Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to.
But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief. – Franz Kafka
