60 Inspiring Quotes About Reading

In a world brimming with distractions, the simple act of reading offers an unparalleled escape, a journey to far-off lands, and a deep dive into the human soul. Reading is not just about digesting words; it's an experience that ignites the imagination and awakens the mind. Whether you’re seeking motivation, consolation, or a new perspective, the right quote at the right time can transform your outlook. This curated collection of 60 inspiring quotes about reading is designed to fuel your passion for books, celebrate the power of the written word, and remind you of the limitless adventures waiting on every page. Dive in and let these words of wisdom inspire your next literary escapade.

1. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” - Margaret Fuller

2. “Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.” - Virginia Woolf

3. “Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write .” - John Adams

4. “Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.” - Lawrence Clark Powell

5. “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.” - Christopher Morley

6. “Reading to small children is a specialty.” - Clifton Fadiman

7. “He talks about God, and loving God. he says that when we open to loving a person, whether that person is a spouse, friend, or child, we open our hearts to loving God. He says when we let someone love us, we're opening our hearts to god's love. he says the acts are the same. p 19I decide loving isn't for the fain. Its for the courageous. p 19” - Melody Beattie

8. “the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"... p982” - Leo Tolstoy

9. “My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.” - Alberto Manguel

10. “In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. ” - Alberto Manguel

11. “Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape -- I didn't read to learn, I was reading to read.” - Christian Bauman

12. “I write for the same reason I read: because it's all there is for me.” - Christian Bauman

13. “Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them.” - Tara Bray Smith

14. “Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant. ” - Tara Bray Smith

15. “The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

16. “I read; I travel; I become” - Derek Walcott

17. “The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read” - Tom Clancy

18. “When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the person he cared for most, could have pleasure in reading it? What would he do?” - Alysha Speer

19. “A homeless man visited my store today. The few quarters that he had in his pocket he invested on books. I offered him free books, but he insisted on giving me his quarters. He walked away filled with joy as if he possessed the world's riches in his hands. In a way, he did. He left me smiling and knowing that he was wealthier than many others... (01-21-10)” - Besa Kosova

20. “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” - Vera Nazarian

21. “Read "The Story of O." Convince yourself that it was in fact written by a woman or someone who thinks like a woman.” - Whitney Otto

22. “The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.” - Betty Smith

23. “Life's adventures make great reading!” - Denise Robbins

24. “I don't write like this in order to show how clever and well read I am--though I am rather clever and well read as a matter of fact.” - John Heath-Stubbs

25. “It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather's Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or when I traveled abroad. I would always read before sleeping. One day, I'd be so rich I would have a library full of novel to choose from. But I would always end the evening with a Bible passage.” - Laurie Halse Anderson

26. “Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.” - Pseudonymous Bosch

27. “ ‘Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are’ is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.” - Francois Mauriac

28. “When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.” - Nora Ephron

29. “The trouble in life is not that you are extraordinarily or ordinarily talented but you are read posthumously.” - Santosh Kalwar

30. “I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.” - Ernest Hemingway

31. “Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.” - Scott Westerfeld

32. “I realise people exist who don't read. But it's like I knew there were people who didn't breathe or eat: I can't imagine a life like that.” - Sarah Rees Brennan

33. “Un livre est un peu de silence entre les mains du lecteur.Celui qui écrit calme.Celui qui le lit ne rompt pas le silence.” - Pascal Quignard

34. “I used to think I was the strangest person in the worldbut then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I doI would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.well, I hope that if you are out there you read this and know that yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.” - Rebecca Katherine Martin

35. “Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.” - Markus Zusak

36. “read for life read for your mindread till you can't read...” - jeejy

37. “The sole/soul purpose of a book is to be read.” - Dani J Caile

38. “Jack reads too many books. He thinks we're going to drive all year and have great adventures.” - Steven Herrick

39. “Sono convinto che chi non legge resta uno stupido. Anche se nella vita sa destreggiarsi, il fatto di non ingerire regolarmente parole scritte lo condanna ineluttabilmente all'ignoranza, indipendentemente dai suoi averi e dalle sue attività.” - Edward Bunker

40. “worksheets - the archenemy of abundant, purposeful reading (and discussion and writing).” - Mike Schmoker

41. “When we unnecessarily elongate the process of "learning to read," we postpone "reading to learn" - learning itself - by years.” - Mike Schmoker

42. “These programs and reading series are the fruit of an intellectually exhausted literacy industry that lost its way long ago, even as we mutely accepted its misguided agenda - to complicate reading and literacy so that we will purchase its programs and materials.” - Mike Schmoker

43. “She asked me could I read and write. I told her, "Of course, and I can talk too.” - Sister Souljah

44. “You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman.""Thought!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world is not to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good Lord, now, only now I realize what I've done. My grandfather and father were firemen. Walking in my sleep I followed them.” - Ray Bradbury

45. “Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.” - Hilary Mantel

46. “Growing Literacy of the Heart and Mind Cultivates the Landscape of a Child's Future.” - Clyde Heath

47. “I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.” - Julian Barnes

48. “My message for all my readers is: Don't believe in those who claim that youth is a passing disease you just have to get rid of. Don't believe, that maturity is a goal and an asset to go after. Nothing will ever be ready, that is what makes life interesting. Read!” - Tuula Kallioniemi

49. “If you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.” - Ray Bradbury

50. “If I'd waited until I was well rested to read, I never would have read anything.” - Will Schwalbe

51. “I do not read for I have renounced life, I read because one life is just not enough for me.” - Abbas Al-Akkad

52. “The number of books students read...is among the best indicators of student reading development.” - Mike Schmoker

53. “I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad's study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read.” - John Green

54. “This is unbearable ... God. These books she'll never read. Her Life's Library.” - John Green

55. “And no matter what anybody says, I don't believe all this trouble started when women got the vote. As far as I'm concerned, it goddamn well got started when you taught each other how to read.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

56. “Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” (Wellesly High School commencement speech, “You Are Not Special”, 6-12)” - David McCullough

57. “Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” (Wellesly High School commencement speech, “You Are Not Special”, 6-12)” - Teacher David McCullough

58. “I kissed my fingers,held my palm flat beside my mouth and blew it into the air that surrounded her memory. I closed my eyes, thinking this was one of those moments you see in movies or read about in books where everything comes together.” - Belinda Jeffrey

59. “You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can't ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it's important, that it's not typing; it's writing.” - Roger Kahn

60. “Forget boys and read a good book. Or study. When you're twenty-five and ranking in the big bucks, men will be falling all over you're a successful professional woman.” - Stephie Davis