50 Famous Quotes About Reading Books

Reading is a joy. It brings emotions of pain, happiness, laughter and many we don’t even have a name for. There are millions of books today. Each with it’s own unique story and lessons to learn. Too many for us to read and yet, many of us don’t even read. Reading may be one of the most important things you could do and a habit of reading can change your life! Check out why reading is important here.

The average fortune 500 CEO reads over 50 books a year. That’s almost one a week. It is one of the most common habit among successful people. Warren Buffet once said that the key to success is by reading everyday. The knowledge compounds every time you read. Ultra successful people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and Oprah Winfrey, just to name a few, take reading to an extreme level. That’s what it takes to be successful. I don’t know a successful person in the world who doesn’t read or at least listen to audiobooks. For book summaries, check out this app and see what Blinkist is.

We’ve compiled a list of our top 50 quotes about reading. There are millions of quotes, good, bad and funny about books and we compiled the best of the best. Comment below and let us know which quote you liked the most! Or if we missed one you really like. 

Reading Quotes

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

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” – Mark Twain

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” – William Faulkner

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don’t read.” – Mark Twain

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” – Alan Bennett

“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

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx

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

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan

“We read to know we’re not alone.” – William Nicholson

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” – Orhan Pamuk

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

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz

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

“A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal” – John Green

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.” – Jorge Luis Borges

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

“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.” – Joseph Joubert

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller

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

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” – Jules Verne

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape — I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read.” – Christian Bauman

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” – John Green

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” – John Green

“We live for books.” – Umberto Eco

“What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!” – Thomas Babington Macaulay

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

“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 William Eliot

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” – Gustave Flaubert

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” – Logan Pearsall Smith

“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 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

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” – Cassandra Clare

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” – Voltaire

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Joseph Brodsky

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.” – Roberto Bolaño

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?” – Christopher Paolini

“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.” – Stéphane Mallarmé

“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.” – Gary Paulsen

“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

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” – Stephen Fry

These quotes are really inspiring. If you’re like me, you feel like picking up a book right this moment! Get into the habit. Try it out for a week and see how this week can be your best week yet! Let all the knowledge compound and see how picking up a simple habit like reading really changes your life for the better. Don’t forget to share this post!