Peter Kropotkin Quotes

It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good; but well reading of a few.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

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.

Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Memorizing, guessing, looking at pictures, predicting, substituting, and skipping, are not reading; they are very bad habits.

The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that "the abundance of books is a distraction." Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.

Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind.

Good readers make much out of little.

I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them, they might as well cut bread and butter. Unless you give at least 45 minutes of careful, fatiguing reflection upon what you are reading, your minutes are chiefly wasted.

I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.

As you read, allow your reading to cluster around your interests.

Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.

In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone, and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words.

Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.

For those who are going to learn from books, learning the art of reading would seem to be indispensable.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.

... we must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think.