Funny Quotes About Reading Habits - Cheeky Quote Day! 18 Nov 2009

Reading Upside Down Photo by garryknight @ flickr

From Denny: When someone like me goes hunting for quotes you just never know what odd cache you might find. Well, this time I ran across a huge amount of quotes about the subject of reading. Some are quite cheeky and many are serious thought about the concept of how reading is beneficial to humanity.

I was surprised just how much thought many writers and philosophers gave to the subject - as these kinds of quotes are rarely discussed. I'll start with the funniest ones first. Of course, by now, you have guessed that notables like author Mark Twain had a thing or two to say. He was known for a reputation of speaking as an irreverant being - and still managed to be well loved by all... :)

Quotes

Classic. A book which people praise and don't read.
~ Mark Twain ~

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.
~ Mark Twain ~

My books are water;
those of the great geniuses are wine -
everybody drinks water.
~ Mark Twain ~

The man who doesn't read good books
has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
~ Mark Twain ~



After school plan: get in bed, read fairy tales, two swords under pillow just in case photo by Liz Henry @ flickr

Readers may be divided into four classes:

1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in
nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get
through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by
what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them;
the only books I have in my library are books
that other folks have left me.
~ Anatole France ~

I read the newspaper avidly.
It is my one form of continuous fiction.
~ Aneurin Bevan ~

Beware of the man of one book.
~ Thomas Aquinas ~

Good children's literature appeals not only to
the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.
~ Anonymous ~

By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing
or at least tickle your thinking.
~ William Safire ~

The printing press is either the greatest blessing
or the greatest curse of modern times,
sometimes one forgets which it is.
~ Sir James M. Barrie ~

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers
but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.
~ Stan Barstow ~

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

A library is a hospital for the mind.
~ Anonymous ~

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.
~ Robert Chambers ~

The flood of print has turned reading into a process
of gulping rather than savoring.
~ Warren Chappell ~

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
~ Lord Chesterfield ~

The great American novel has not only already been written,
it has already been rejected.
~ Frank Dane ~

Never judge a book by its movie.
~ J. W. Eagan ~

MY BOOK!
I did it!
I did it!
Come and look
At what I’ve done!
I read a book!
When someone wrote it
Long ago
For me to read,
How did he know
That this was the book
I’d take from the shelf
And lie on the floor
And read by myself?
I really read it!
Just like that!
Word by word,
From first to last!
I’m sleeping with
This book in bed,
This first FIRST book
I’ve ever read!
~ David L. Harrison ~

The libraries have become my candy store.
~ Juliana Kimball ~



Read and take off photo by library_mistress @ flickr

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
~ Anonymous Teacher ~

I've traveled the world twice over,
Met the famous; saints and sinners,
Poets and artists, kings and queens,
Old stars and hopeful beginners,
I've been where no-one's been before,
Learned secrets from writers and cooks
All with one library ticket
To the wonderful world of books.
~ Anonymous ~

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
~ Isaac Asimov ~

Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
~ Francis Bacon ~

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man,
and writing an exact man.
~ Francis Bacon ~

Books are men of higher stature;
the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
~ E.S. Barrett ~

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
~ Stephen Vincent Benet ~

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

It is well to read everything of something,
and something of everything.
~ Lord Henry P. Brougham ~

I must say that I find television very educational.
The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
~ Groucho Marx ~

Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
~ Groucho Marx ~

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded
by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.
~ Fran Lebowitz ~



Reading in Cadiz, Spain photo by Kamil Porembinski @ flickr

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky.
My pile of books
Are 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 ~

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
~ Hugh Maclennan ~

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
~ Bertrand Russell ~

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
~ Anna Quindlen ~

A library is thought in cold storage.
~ Herbert Samuel ~

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.
~ A. S. W. Rosenbach ~



Reading on the platform photo by moriza @ flickr

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; piled high, packed large - where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
~ Edmund Burke ~

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
~ Samuel Butler ~

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
~ Albert Camus ~

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
~ Chinese proverb ~

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
~ Marcus T. Cicero ~

I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books;
they are missing a chance to lead an extra life.
~ Scott Corbett ~

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 ~

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -
and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.
~ John Dawkins ~



Please read instructions fully before opening photo by foxypar4 @ flickr

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 ~

To read is to empower
To empower is to write
To write is to influence
To Influence is to change
To change is to live.
~ Jane Evershed ~
More than a Tea Party

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.
~ Harriet Martineau ~

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...
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 ~

Books: the children of the brain.
~ Jonathan Swift ~

And from the cheekiest guy around:

The more that you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
the more places you'll go.
~ Dr. Seuss ~

*** Awesome fun photos from the folks over a flickr. Thanks for visiting and come back often! Have a great work week! :)