60 Quotes About Reading That’ll Inspire You To Pick Up A Book

Open your heart to these words from authors and celebrities about their favorite pastime

Few things are better than reading a good book on your porch on a warm summer night, but sometimes it’s nice to get some encouragement from other readers to get those pages turning. That’s why we’ve pulled some quotes about reading that are sure to satisfy every kind of reader. We even have some quotes about reading for the kids and students in your life.

Quotes About The Magic Of Books

• “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.” ― Walt Disney

• “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” ― Victor Hugo

• “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ― Jane Austen

• “Books are the mirrors of the soul.”― Virginia Woolf

• “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ― John Locke

• “I can survive well enough on my own – if given the proper reading material.” ― Sarah J. Maas

• “Literature is my Utopia” ― Helen Keller

• “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.” ― Jane Austen

• “Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.” ― Louisa May Alcott

• “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen

• “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King

• “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” ― Garrison Keillor
  

Quotes For Book Lovers

• “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” ― Harper Lee

• “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”― Ernest Hemingway

• “Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”― Lemony Snicket

• “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” ― René Descartes

• “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ― Cicero

• “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ― C.S. Lewis

• “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” ― Henry David Thoreau

• “I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” ― Emma Thompson

• “I guess there are never enough books.” ― John Steinbeck

• “For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.” ― Audrey Hepburn

• “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.” ― Nora Ephron

• “The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”― Eleanor Roosevelt

• “You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.” ― Paul Rand

• “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ― Jane Austen

• “I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.” ― Benedict Cumberbatch

• "Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." ― E.B. White

Quotes About Reading That Will Expand Your Horizons

• “What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.” ― Oprah

• “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” ― Margaret Fuller

• “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “I’ve always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.” ― Taylor Jenkins Reid
  

• "I'm reading so much and exposing myself to so many new ideas. It almost feels like the chemistry and the structure of my brain is changing so rapidly sometimes,” ― Emma Watson

• "Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind," ― Toni Morrison

• “I have challenged myself that I will read thousands of books and I will empower myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism,” ― Malala Yousafzai

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” ― Joseph Addison

• “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.”― Mary Schmich

• “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” ― Joyce Carol Oates

• “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

• “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”― Helen Exley

• “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” ― Mortimer J. Adler

• "One of the many gifts that books give readers is a connection to each other. When we share an affection for a writer, an author or a story, we also have a better understanding of people unlike ourselves. Books cultivate empathy." ― Sarah Jessica Parker

• "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." ― Ernest Hemingway

• “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ― John Locke

• "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." ― Benjamin Franklin

Quotes About Reading For Children And Students

• “There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” ― Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

• “I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” ― Roald Dahl

• “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” ― C.S. Lewis

• “Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” ― Napoléon Bonaparte

• “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”― Maya Angelou

• “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” ― Harry Truman

• "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go," ― Dr. Seuss

• "I wouldn't be a songwriter if it wasn't for books that I loved as a kid. I think that when you can escape into a book it trains your imagination to think big and to think that more can exist than what you see." ― Taylor Swift

• "Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible," ― Barack Obama

• “I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” ​​― Maya Angelou

• “Don’t give up reading, the more you practice, the easier it will get.” ― unknown

• “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them.“ ― Judy Blume

• “A child who carries a book with a bookmark in it is in two places at the same time.” ― Tony Abbott

• “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young” ― Maya Angelou

• “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

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