41 Quotes About Reading

Reading is more than fundamental. Reading is a pastime, a learning tool, and a thinking tool. You’re reading this blog, so it’s a good guess that you are a reader. I hope you enjoy these 41 quotes about reading.


If you can read this, thank a teacher.

– Anonymous Teacher

If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

– J.K. Rowling

You can tell a lot about a person by the book they’re carrying.

 Joseph Patrick Pascale

No two persons ever read the same book.

–Edmund Wilson

Never judge a book by its movie.

– J. W. Eagan

Quotes About Reading & the Mind

A bookstore is the only evidence we have that people are still thinking.

―Jerry Seinfield

Reading is the life-saving water for our minds. Drink pure words as much as you need and remain alive! 

― Munia Khan

A library is a hospital for the mind.

— Anonymous
Photo of rows of bookshelves in a library, part of 41 Quotes about reading

A library is thought in cold storage.

— Herbert Samuel

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.

–Edward P. Morgan

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

– Joseph Addison

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

–Haruki Murakami

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

– Jim Rohn

Quotes About Why We Read

I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

–William Lyon Phelps
Image of woman on red sofa, reading a book.

We read to know that we are not alone.

–William Nicholson

A love of reading shows empathy, the desire to understand how others live or act or might act – and why.

–Celeste Ng

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

–Bertrand Russell

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

–William Godwin

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

–Mason Cooley

Reading allows me to recharge my batteries.

–Rahul Dravid 

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. 

—Kofi Annan

Quotes About Reading & Kids

Reading is a joy for my kids, and to swing in a hammock on a lazy summer day reading a good book just goes with summer.

—Marcia Gay Harden

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.  

—Kate DiCamillo

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his needs, is good for him. 

—Maya Angelou

One of the greatest gifts adults can give—to their offspring and to their society—is to read to children.

—Carl Sagan

Quotes About Reading & Society

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

–Joseph Brodsky

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

– Ray Bradbury

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. 

—Vera Nazarian

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

–Mark Twain

Quotes about the Love of Reading

Books are a uniquely portable magic. – Stephen King

A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.

–Neil Gaiman

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 book is a gift you can open again and again.

– Garrison Keillor

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

– Louis L’Amour

Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.

– Diane Duane

A house without books is like a room without windows. 

—Heinrich Mann

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. 

—Edmund Burke

There’s so much more to a book than just the reading.  

—Maurice Sendak

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

If you enjoyed these quotes you might enjoy brainyquote.com or the quotes on goodreads.com.

Thanks for reading quotes about my favorite pastime. Were any of the 41 quotes about reading your favorites? Do you have a favorite one I missed?

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