Quotes on the Importance of Reading

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” – Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

“There’s no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature . . . You can get into the best minds that are now or that have ever been in the world.” – Stephen Covey

“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 man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” – Mark Twain

“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 serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” – Abraham Lincoln

“A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” – Abraham Lincoln

“The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.” – Andrew Ross

“TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” – Author Unknown

“Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’” – Helen Exley

“Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.” – Jesse Lee Bennett

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” – Harry S. Truman

“When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.” – Clifton Fadiman

“Tell me what you read, and I will tell you who you are” – Slovak proverb

“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” – Edmund Burke

“The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one’s encounter with it in a book.” – Andre Maurois

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” – Richard Steele

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.  I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint…. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” – Henry David Thoreau

“A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.” – Holbrook Jackson

“A blessed companion is a book, – a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend,… a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own. – Douglas Jerrold

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.” – Descartes

“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis

“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.” – Aldous Huxley

“If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well viewed.” – Lily Tomlin

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.” – Thomas Carlyle

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Books and cassettes are not an expense item, they’re an investment – and as far as we know, the best investment on earth. They pay us dividends out of all proportion to the small cost – and not just in pleasure and knowledge, but in cash, in income.” – Earl Nightingale

“I challenge you to do it for an hour a day. One hour a day, seven days a week, for one year is equal to more than nine full weeks of work. Think about what you could be doing to improve your focus and knowledge base the next time you mindlessly turn on the TV.” – Jeffrey Gitomer, on reading

“You can bypass those with more degrees, intelligence and experience by taking advantage of the knowledge incarefully selected books.” – Dan Miller

“You know how I feel about reading good books. They have been my window to a better world since those early days on the farm – they have introduced me to my most significant mentors and have shown me the steps to higher levels of success physically, spiritually, in relationships and in business.” – Dan Miller

“If you read two books a week for ten years, you’ve read a thousand books. And you couldn’t read a thousand books in the next ten years without it drastically affecting every part of your life.” – Jim Rohn

Do you have any good quotes on the importance of reading? Share them in the comments below. I’d love to learn more!

Be Sociable, Share!

•