Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.

I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.

There are fashions in reading, even in thinking. You don't have to follow them unless you want to. On the other hand, watch out. Don't stick too closely to your favorite subject. That would keep you from adventuring into other fields. It's silly to build a wall around your interests.

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people's lives for almost no cost. What a great return!

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

My dad had this outlook: It doesn't matter what I want to read - reading was a good thing. So whatever I was curious about they'd get for me from the library. Books were a kind of a resistance to reality. I liked to imagine worlds that were different. I still do.

One must be an inventor to read well.

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

Knowing a lot...is a springboard to creativity.

The great thing about reading is that it broadens your life

The best leaders are the most dedicated learners. Read great books daily.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.