Reading Quotes - Page 30

• War makes good history but peace is poor reading.

  Thomas Hardy

  Peace, War, Humanity

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• Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society and that general fairness which cements mankind.

  John Locke

  Book, Mind, Peculiar

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• It makes me believe in fate. In most cases, the readings where I've been really bad have usually been the ones where I got the part

  Robin Wright

  Believe, Fate, Cases

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• Reading Christians are growing Christians. When Christians cease to read, they cease to grow.

  John Wesley

  Christian, Growing, Grows

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• I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

  Richard Powers

  Past, Years, Remember

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• You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.

  Jim Thompson

  Book, Ideas, Two

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow.

  Jim Thompson

  Dad, Mind, Trying

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy 'Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?' He said 'I don't know'. I said 'I don't want your job'.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Jobs, Book

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• I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little

  Voltaire

  Book, Littles, Teach

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• Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company-I mean hell.

  John Adams

  Mean, Should Have, Political

  John Adams (1973). “John Adams: a biography in his own words”

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• I took a course in speed reading. Then I got Reader's Digest on microfilm. By the time I got the machine set up, I was done.

  Steven Wright

  Machines, Done, Speed

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• In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

  Charles Mackay

  Running, Mad, People

  Charles Mackay (1852). “Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds: Illustrated with numerous engravings. (2 Thle in 1 vol.). I”, p.7

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• If there is any one truth from the legacy of the Cayce readings, it would be that there is a spiritual dimension to humans, something beyond time and space.

  Henry Reed

  Spiritual, Space, Dimensions

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• I'm still reading some scripts and I model as well, so I'm still doing that. But I don't want to do like just anything so we're being really selective about the stuff I'll do.

  Kim Smith

  Being Real, Stuff, Scripts

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• Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading.

  Michael Tippett

  Country, Imagination, Fascinated

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• Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

  John Denham

  Book, Use, Delight

  Sir John Denham (1719). “Poems and Translations: With The Sophy, a Tragedy. Written by the Honourable Sir John Denham, ...”, p.94

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• I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment.

  John Newton

  Bible, Christian, Spiritual

  John Newton (1824). “The Works of the Rev. John Newton ...”, p.466

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• Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.

  Tim O'Brien

  Book, Long, Waiting

  Tim O'Brien (1990). “The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction”, Broadway

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• There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts…it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text.

  David Coleman

  Art, Nuts, Vocabulary

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• I also like to use a sensational headline. Many people read blogs in aggregators, which generally show only the headline. So you have to give people a reason to click through. Blogs need to be real and personal. Reading it should be like hanging out with you. I play music for my readers. I show them videos I like. I tell them what I did over the weekend. And I tell them what is happening in the technology, Internet, and VC markets.

  Fred Wilson

  Success, Business, Real

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• The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Decision, Narrative

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• The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up.

  Arthur Smith

  Exercise, Night, Light

  "Preparing for the Bard" by Arthur Smith, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2002.

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• Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

  John Locke

  Men, Knowing, Judging

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• All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

  Henry Miller

  Done, Toilets, Might

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

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• When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.

  Adam Smith

  Book, Grace, Amusement

  Adam Smith (1869). “Essays On, I. Moral Sentiments: II. Astronomical Inquiries; III. Formation of Languages; IV. History of Ancient Physics; V. Ancient Logic and Metaphysicis; VI. The Imitative Arts; VII. Music, Dancing, Poetry; VIII. The External Senses; IX. English and Italian Verses”, p.14

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