effective reading Quotes

I will say this: I know no wise person who doesn't read a lot. I suspect that you can read on the computer now and get a lot of benefit out of it, but I doubt that it'll work as well as reading print worked for me.

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.

There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written book I only read the right-hand page and allow my mind to work on the left-hand page. With a poorly written book I read every word.

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.

a good reader makes a good book

More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.

Better readers are better thinkers.

The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems.

Good readers make much out of little.

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

It's an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

It is better to read a little and thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.

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.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.

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

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Whatever we read from intense curiosity gives us a model of how we should always read.

Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also

When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

I endorse a lot of people - sometimes people say I endorse too many books. And my response has always been the same: If I can get one case study that can give me one good idea that I can implement for $25, or for these days one-third of that on Kindle, I've gotten a very good deal.

The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.