Reading

Be no imitator; freshly act thy part.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, from The Poetry of the East (1856). Tradition and Life

Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read'st black where I read white.
~ William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1810).

Reading is the nurse of culture; reflection the mother of genius.
~ William Cowper Brann, in Brann the Iconoclast: A Collection of the Writings of W.C. Brann, Vol. I (1898). Humbugs and Humbuggery

Proud to discover, here and there,
A treasure in the heap!
~ Robert Williams Buchanan, in London Poems (1866). The Bookworm

Not to admire Shakspeare has been deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter II: To A Young Man

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter V: To A Father

And with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Dear Reader

Read, read, sirrah, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes; shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.
~ William Congreve, Love for Love (1695). Act I, scene 1

Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre, he who runs may read.
~ William Cowper, Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools (1784).

The man that is not moved with what he reads,
That takes not fire at their heroic deeds,
Unworthy of the blessings of the brave,
Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

Dear reader! make yourself a serious rover and walk with me and we will talk it over.
~ William Augustus (W.A.) Croffut, A Midsummer Lark (1883). Preface

Sartor Resartus is simply unreadable, and for me that always sort of spoils a book.
~ Will (William Jacob) Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950).

Read the right kinds of books and don't let the author do all of your thinking for you. Interpret thoughts into something definite in your own life. How can you apply it in your work tomorrow? If you can contribute one ounce of original thought, you have dared to dream.
~ William H. Danforth, I Dare You! (1931).

Read eloquently.
~ (William) Robertson Davies, in The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books (1997). Chapter 13. Reading

The reader cannot create. That has been done for him by the author. The reader can only interpret, giving the author a fair chance to make his impression.
~ (William) Robertson Davies, from A Voice From the Attic (1960).

Don't read that trash; read this.
~ William Faulkner (advising customers as a salesman in a New York bookstore), (1921).

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
~ John William Gardner, in The New York Times (January 1983).

Paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
~ William H. Gass, from Habitations of the Word (1985).

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
~ Bill Gates

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a mother who read to me.
~ Strickland Gilliam, The Reading Mother

He that loves reading, has everything within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Part I. V: Of an Early Taste for Reading

He that revels in a well-chosen library has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute as easily to distinguish the nicest shade of difference.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Part I. V: Of an Early Taste for Reading

Trust [the student] in a certain degree with himself. Suffer him in some instances to select his own course of reading. There is danger that there should be something to studied and monotonous in the selection we should make for him. Suffer him to wander through the wilds of literature.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Part I. XV: Of Choice In Reading

As concerns the quantity of what is to be read, there is a single rule, -- Read much, but not many works (multum non multa).
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Vol. II Logic (1833)

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch.
~ Augustus William Hare

I always read everything on the desks of people I went to see in Moscow, London, Paris ... I found it quite useful.
~ William (W.) Averell Harriman (on his ability to read upside down)

Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal -- the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of human life.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker (1826). On Reading Old Books (1821)

When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker (1826). On Reading Old Books (1821)

The bulk of our population may be called an unreading people. They are too busy to read, and that is not the channel by which they have been in the habit of receiving knowledge.
~ William Hooper, Address Delivered before the Literary Society of Pittsborough (1835).

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to cerebrate!
~ William James, Letter to Gertrude Stein (25 May 1910).

Reading, like prayer, remains one of our few private acts.
~ William Jovanovich

The average reader is more interested in fun than in intellectual pursuits.
~ William A. Katz

I don't have time to read nonfiction.
~ William Patrick (W.P.) Kinsella

It's too bad for us "literary" enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless -- pictures tell any story more effectively than words. ... If children will read comics ... why isn't it advisable to give them some constructive comics to read?
~ William Moulton Marston, in The American Scholar (c. 1940).

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

[M]ost of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from Books and You (1940).

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

I know of no sentence that can induce such immediate and brazen lying as the one that begins, "Have you read --."
~ Wilson Mizner

The Five-Foot Shelf, with its introductions, notes, guides to reading, and exhaustive indexes, may thus claim to constitute with these Lectures a reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.
~ William Allan Neilson, in The Harvard Classics. 1909-14, Lectures on the Harvard Classics Introductory Notes

Newspapers are read at the breakfast and dinner tables. God's great gift to man is appetite. Put nothing in the paper that will destroy it.
~ William Rockhill Nelson, in The Kansas City Star (23 September 1939). A Great Newspaper Builds A Great Art Museum

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

Start at once a bed-side library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.
~ William Osler, from Aequanimitas: With Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practioners of Medicine (1904). The Master-word in Medicine (University of Toronto; 1903)

There should be in connection with every library a corps of instructors in the art of reading, who would, as a labour of love, teach the young idea how to read.
~ William Osler, Dedication address, Boston Medical Library (1901). Books and Men

Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential.
~ William Osler, in the British Medical Journal (2 October 1909). Remarks on The Medical Library in Post-Graduate Work

With half an hour's reading in bed every night as a steady practice, the busiest man can get a fair eduction before the plasma sets in the periganglionic spaces of his gray cortex.
~ William Osler, in the British Medical Journal (2 October 1909). Remarks on The Medical Library in Post-Graduate Work

The spirit of a man knows the things of a man; and more true knowledge comes by meditation and just reflection, than by reading; for much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle; which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.
~ William Penn, Advice to His Children (1699).

I divide all readers into two classes -- those who read to remember, and those who read to forget.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, in The Rotarian Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 2 (August 1929). Literature as a Necessity of Life

Reading is the cheapest and easiest method of overcoming the limits of time and space.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, in The Rotarian Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 2 (August 1929). Literature as a Necessity of Life

The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, Radio Address, New Haven, Conn. (6 April 1933). Owning Books

A breakfast without a newspaper is a horse without a saddle. You are just riding bareback if you got now news for breakfast.
~ Will Rogers, (1934).

I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newpapers make it.
~ Will Rogers, (1934).

You should never try and teach a pig to read for two reasons. First, it's impossible; and secondly, it annoys the hell out of the pig!
~ Will Rogers

A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top -- purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
~ William L. Safire

Departing guests leave The Word and grab the words.
~ William L. Safire

But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style
I'll read, his for his love.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 32

He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

Our philosophy is to edit our papers for readers. To find out what the readers want and edit it that way.
~ William Dean Singleton, in Editor & Publisher magazine (5 July 1986). A texan returns home

And all the time it's your own story, even when you think -- "It's all just made up, a trick. What is the author trying to do?" Reader, we are in such a story: all of this is trying to arrange a kind of prayer for you. Pray for me.
~ William Stafford

A man without a newspaper is half-clad, and imperfectly furnished for the battle of life.
~ W.T. (William Thomas) Stead, The Contemporary Review, vol L (1886). The Future of Journalism

[R]eading was ... the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
~ William Styron, Sophie's Choice (1979).

Never allow yourself ... to read books of an immoral tendency, whatever attractions they may possess from a refined and fascinating style.
~ William Buel Sprague, Letters On Practical Subjects, From A Clergyman Of New-England, To His Daughter (1822). Letter XI: General Reading

Learn to read slow: all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.
~ William Walker, The Art of Reading

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.
~ Bill Watterson, Speech at Kenyon College Commencement, Gambier, Ohio (20 May 1990). Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled

All "little" magazines have the luxury of thinking the reader is the same person as their editors.
~ William Whitworth

Schools, including universities, must insist upon the prestige of reading and especially of reading old books.
~ George F. Will, With a Happy Eye But...: America and the World, 1997-2002 (September 2002).

Children entering school today without basic reading knowledge are at risk of long term failure.
~ Carmelita K. Williams, Testimony before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Washington DC (26 September 2000). Importance of Literacy

When it comes to reading, parents can ensure that their children's literacy rights are honored! Talk to your child's school and find out about the quality reading practices that are going on in the classroom.
~ Carmelita K. Williams

A knowledge of the sounds of letters, and of the effect of the position of the letter upon its sound, is an essential means of mastering the mechanics of reading, and of enabling children to become independent readers.
~ Lida M. Williams, How to Teach Phonics (1916). Foreward

I always choose an old style serif face for the main body copy because that style is the most readable. I always choose some strong, black sans serif to contrast it so the heads, subheads, etc., stand out in the organization of the material.
~ (Ms.) Robin Williams, DT&G Magazine "Typography" (July 2003). Interview with Robin Williams

I get some of my best reading done in the middle of the night when it is quiet and there are no distractions.
~ Roger J. Williams, Ph.D., D.Sc., You Are Extraordinary (1967).

In the imagination, we are from henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All (1923).

Reading for me is like breathing. It is essential for my life.
~ William P. Wood

O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Simon Lee, the old Huntsman

Up! Up! and drink the spirit breath'd
From dead men to their kind.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Expostulation and Reply

The reader will notice if you are putting on airs. Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 4. Style