Thoughtful Reading Quotes

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

...Generally people don't recomend this type of book at all. It is far too interesting. Perhaps you have had other books recomended to you. Perhaps, even, you have been given books by friends, parents, teachers, then told that these books are the type you have to read. Those books are invariably described as "important"- which in my experience, pretty much means that they're boring. (words like meaningful and thoughtful are other good clues.)

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

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.

Always read with a pen in your hands, not beside you on the table, but actually in your hand, ready, armed ... Put a question mark by everything you find suspect. Underline anything you really appreciate. Feel free to write 'splendid,' but also, 'I don't believe a word of it.' And even 'bullshit.'

I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.

There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.

To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.

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.

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

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.

I suppose people might consider me a 'loose' reader, as I seem willing to read anything of quality thinking and prose.

If I could offer but one helpful hint to young Hoosiers hoping to better their odds for success in life, I would simply note the importance of thoughtful reading.

I like books that are exciting and that make you think about things as well.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

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

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.