T. S. Eliot Quotes

Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out.

All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

Reading opens your mind and helps you understand and empathize with people who are unlike you and outside your breadth of experience.

Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.

Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.

People really need to take time and read a book. You know? That’s my advice. You could read A New Slant on Life, you could read Dianetics. And I think if you really read it, you’ll understand it, but unless you do, you’ll speculate. And I think that’s a mistake to do that.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

It's not how many books you get through, it's how many books get through you.

One should never underestimate the power of books.