Books and Reading

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

-Garrison Keillor

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.

-Emilie Buchwald

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.

-Harry S. Truman

 Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

-Margaret Fuller

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

-Mason Cooley

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

-Dr. Seuss 

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

-Toni Morrison

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

Anna Quindlen

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

-Henry Ward Beecher

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

-Austin Phelps

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

-Charles W. Eliot

 Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

-Groucho Marx

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.

-Groucho Marx

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.

-Andrew Ross

TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six. Open your child's imagination. Open a book.

-author unknown

So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

-Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

-Chinese Proverb

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

-William Hazlitt

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.

-Paul Sweeny

 Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

-Jessamyn West

 Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled "This could change your life.

-Helen Exley

 When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.

-Clifton Fadiman

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

-William Styron

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.

-author unknown

I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget.

-William Lyon Phelps

A house without books is like a room without windows.

-Heinrich Mann

Never judge a book by its movie.

-J.W. Eagan

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

-Richard Steele

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

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

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations--something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.

-Katherine Patterson 

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

-Francis Bacon

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one.

-Chinese Proverb

A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say, "How to Build a Boat."

Stephen Wright

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

P.J. O'Rourke 

  
I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.

-Lord Chesterfield

(I included that last one because I think it would be amusing to put it in front of a group of third graders and see how long it takes them to figure out what the author is talking about.) 


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