When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.
What books shall I read? is a question constantly put by the student to the teacher. My reply usually is, "None: write your notes out carefully and fully; strive to understand them thoroughly; come to me for the explanation of anything you cannot understand; and I would rather you did not distract your mind by reading." A properly composed course of lectures ought to contain fully as much matter as a student can assimilate in the time occupied by its delivery; and the teacher should always recollect that his business is to feed and not to cram the intellect. Indeed, I believe that a student who gains from a course of lectures the simple habit of concentrating his attention upon a definitely limited series of facts, until they are thoroughly mastered, has made a step of immeasurable importance.
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.
What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press has done for the mind; and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
There are no English lives worth reading except those of players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability good-day.
Neither sign a paper without reading it, nor drink water without seeing it.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings that will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily time-worn yoke of their opinions.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Jess would have been an omnivorous reader of books had it not been her conviction that reading was idling.
His life is like your life and my life and all the lives of all the people who are reading these words right now. It’s a roiling stew of fear and need and desire and love and the hunger to be loved. And mostly, it’s the latter.
It is not the face which deceives; it is we who deceive ourselves in reading in it what is not there.
Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.--_Montesquieu._
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing
Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.
The object of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written.
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
The habit and power of reading with reflection, comprehension, and memory all alert and awake, does not come at once to the natural man any more than many other sovereign virtues.
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.--_Fénelon._
There is very little difference between someone who cannot read and someone who will not read. The result of either is ignorance. Those who are serious seekers of personal development must remove the self-imposed limitations they have placed on their reading skills and their reading habits.
If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.
It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.--_Coleridge._
The volume herewith presented is the natural result of the compiler's habit of transferring and classifying significant passages from known authors. No special course of reading has been pursued, the thoughts being culled from foreign and native tongues--from the moss-grown tomes of ancient literature and the verdant fields of to-day. The terse periods of others, appropriately quoted, become in a degree our own; and a just estimation is very nearly allied to originality, or, as the author of _Vanity Fair_ tells us, "Next to excellence is the appreciation of it." Without indorsing the idea of a modern authority that the multiplicity of facts and writings is becoming so great that every available book must soon be composed of extracts only, still it is believed that such a volume as "Pearls of Thought" will serve the interest of general literature, and especially stimulate the mind of the thoughtful reader to further research. The pleasant duty of the compiler has been to follow the expressive idea of Colton, and he has made the same use of books as a bee does of flowers,--she steals the sweets from them, but does not injure them.
Learn to read slow: all other graces Will follow in their proper places.
There are very few people in this world who get any good by either writing or reading.
The worst thing to do is to die while reading LIFE magazine.
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
It is not the reading of many books that is necessary to make a man wise and good, but the well-reading of a few.
Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in--a real, not an imaginary--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.
If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,--and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking,--the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.
We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.
Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.
The calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead ... but the best receipt (best to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
I remember somewhere reading of an interview between the poet Southey and a good Quaker. Southey was a man of marvellous powers of work. He had a habit of dividing his time into little parts each of which was filled up, and he told the Quaker what he did in this hour and that, and so on through the day until far into the night The Quaker listened, and at the close said, "Well, but, friend Southey, when dost thee think?"
The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception.
One day when the Raiders were in Oakland, a reporter visited their locker room to talk to Ken Stabler. Stabler really wasn’t known as an intellectual, but he was a good quarterback. This newspaperman read him some English prose: “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than that it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy, impermanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” After reading this to the quarterback, the reporter asked, “What does this mean to you?” Stabler immediately replied, “Throw deep.” Go after it. Go out to win in life.
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ― Joseph Brodsky
For now the poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry.
when people, especially politicians, start making decisions based on a reading of their moral compass, facts tend to be among the first casualties.
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Tel, en vous lisant, admire chaque trait, / Qui dans le fond de l'ame vous craint et vous hait=--Such a one, in reading your work, admires every line, but, at the bottom of his soul, he fears and hates you.
Ownership is a sine qua non of sustainable development. [Endorsement by World Bank President in The Ownership Solution by Jeff Gates, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1998.]
You write with ease to show your breeding, / But easy writing's cursed hard reading.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. [“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” excerpted from Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.] I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers, against my father’s wishes–he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions–in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites. Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society. [ Ibid. ] Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself. [ Ibid. ] T]ruth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise, and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth century capitalism failed to see that life is social and Marxism failed and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both. [ Ibid. ] With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice. [ Ibid. ] [C]apitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism. [ Ibid. ] Personalism’s insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality. [ Ibid. ] A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even these persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole. [ Ibid. ] [A]gape means recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. [ Ibid. ]
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading were but read.
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Biography is the most universally pleasant, the most universally profitable, of all reading.
What people call her= (England's) =history is not hers at all; but that of her kings (though the history of them is worth reading), or the tax-gatherers employed by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history or Mr. Lowe's, yours or mine.
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. And 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
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.
Much reading makes one haughty and pedantic; much observation= (_Sehen_) =makes one wise, sociable, and helpful.
I was sixteen years old when the first World War broke out, and I lived at that time in Hungary. From reading the newspapers in Hungary, it would have appeared that, whatever Austria and Germany did was right and whatever England, France, Russia, or America did was wrong. A good case could be made out for this general thesis, in almost every single instance. It would have been difficult for me to prove, in any single instance, that the newspapers were wrong, but somehow, it seemed to me unlikely that the two nations located in the center of Europe should be invariably right, and that all the other nations should be invariably wrong. History, I reasoned, would hardly operate in such a peculiar fashion, and it didn't take long until I began to hold views which were diametrically opposed to those held by the majority of my schoolmates.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
In the Bible we discover a real and complex God. If you have a personal relationship with any real person, you will regularly be confused and infuriated by him or her. So, too, you will be regularly confounded by the God you meet in the Scriptures—as well as amazed and comforted. Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word. This wedding of the Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God.
You will find that most books worth reading once are worth reading twice.
In the same way, metrics can record the frequency of our church attendance, the regularity of our Bible reading and the exact amount of our tithing, but they can never gauge the genuineness of any of them, or whether they are any better than “the noise of the solemn assemblies” against which the prophets fulminated.
If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Drink nothing without seeing it, sign nothing without reading it.
It requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman ... to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day for good and disinterested reading.
All that literature has to bestow may be obtained by reading and by practical exercise in writing and in speaking; but I do not exaggerate when I say that none of the best gifts of science are to be won by these means. On the contrary, the great benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought into immediate contact with facts--upon the degree to which he learns the habit of appealing directly to Nature, and of acquiring through his senses concrete images of those properties of things, which are, and always will be, but approximatively expressed in human language. Our way of looking at Nature, and of speaking about her, varies from year to year; but a fact once seen, a relation of cause and effect, once demonstratively apprehended, are possessions which neither change nor pass away, but, on the contrary, form fixed centres, about which other truths aggregate by natural affinity.
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
Never read borrowed books. To be without books of your own is the abyss of penury. Don't endure it. And when you have to buy them, you'll think whether they're worth reading; which you had better, on all accounts.
He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.
All these operations of reading, writing, and ciphering are intellectual tools, whose use should, before all things, be learned, and learned thoroughly; so that the youth may be enabled to make his life that which it ought to be, a continual progress in learning and in wisdom.
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Every science fiction is a reading of the period that produced it.
Not every startup is a success. In fact, as I’m sure you’re well aware if you’re reading this post: the majority of startups fail. Some, like mine, started product development too early and never made it to market.
In order that you may not quench the Spirit, you must make it a constant study to know what is the mind of the Spirit. You must discriminate with the utmost care between His suggestions and the suggestions of your own deceitful heart. You will keep in constant recollection what are the offices of the Spirit as described by Christ in the Gospel of John. You will be on your guard against impulsive movements, inconsiderate acts, rash words. You will abide in prayer. Search the Word. Confess Christ on all possible occasions. Seek the society of His people. Shrink from conformity to the world, its vain fashions, unmeaning etiquette. Be scrupulous in your reading. "What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch!" "Have oil in your lamps." "Quench not the Spirit."--_Bowen._
If we are not being moved in heart and moved to new places in life—new levels of obedience to God—we are not really reading the Bible the way God wants us to.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
When the legend is retold, it mirrors the reality of the time, and one can learn from studying how various authors have attempted to retell the story. I don't think we have an obligation to change it radically. I think that if we ever move too far from the basic story, we would lose something very precious. I don't, for instance, approve of fantasy that attempts to go back and rewrite the Middle Ages until it conforms to political correctness in the twentieth century. That removes all the benefit from reading the story. If you don't understand other people in their time and why they did what they did, then you don't understand your own past. And when you lose your past, you lose some potential for your own future.
That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveller exceeds that which is got by reading.
A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
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.