Mark Twain Quotes About Reading

• Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Life, Friendship

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.28, St. Martin's Press

• A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Success, Education

• 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Following the Equator ch. 25, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Life, Sarcastic

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.31, St. Martin's Press

• A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Inspirational Life, Book

  Following the Equator (1897) ch. 27

• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Education

  Mark Twain (2015). “The Prince and the Pauper (StoneHenge Classics)”, p.154, StoneHenge Classics

• The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.

  Mark Twain

  Bible, Reading, Christianity

• In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

• I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning-knowing well that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.

  Mark Twain

  Morning, Prayer, Reading

• One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, Two

• By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Reading, Men

• It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.

  Mark Twain

  Believe, Reading, Eye

  Mark Twain (2006). “Mark Twain Speaking”, p.158, University of Iowa Press

• I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

  Mark Twain

  Trust, Believe, Book

  1900 Speech on'The Disappearance of Literature' at the Nineteenth Century Club, 20 Nov. Quoted in Albert Bigelow Paine (ed) MarkTwain's Speeches (1910).

• There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.

  Mark Twain

  Reading, People, Soul

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.333, Courier Corporation

• I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, Years

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.57, Chartwell

• I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair & reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. The proof-reading on the P & Pauper cost me the last rags of my religion.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Book, Reading

  Mark Twain, William Dean Howells (1967). “Selected Mark Twain-Howells letters, 1872-1910”

• There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, Thinking

• People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, People

• I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, People

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.475, Univ of California Press

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