Daniel Levitin Quotes

Read much, but not many works.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

Say I lived until 80 and read a book a month seriously, that means I was looking at 480 books left in my life. If I had only 480 left, I wanted to stop sifting through material I didn't have confidence in and turn my attention to those that I know merited my reading.

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

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...

Today, with the abundance of books available, it is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read. … Feed only on the best. As John Wesley’s mother counseled him: ‘Avoid whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, … increases the authority of the body over the mind.

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.

He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. 'One must have some question,' he wrote, 'addressed to the book one is going to read.

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

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.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

You can tell a man's taste in literature by his judgment in knowing what not to read.

Life is too short to waste time on books that end badly

The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.

I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.

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

A man who attempts to read all the new productions must do as the flea does,--skip.

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

Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous 'gluttonism' for books.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading, but my husband corrupted me, and now I'm dozens ahead of myself!