Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist

 

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Francis Bacon, philosopher

 

A good reader is rarer than a good writer.

Jorge Luis Borges, writer

 

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid pieces of paper folds  world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet you or excite you.

Anne Lamott, writer

 

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined accomplishments of skipping and skimming.

A.J.Balfour, former British prime minister

 

He ate and drank the precious words, His Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust.

Emily Dickson, poet

 

 

A book must be an ice axe to break the frozen sea within us.

Franz Kafka, writer

 

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork...reading, writing, thinking can.

Helen Gurley Brown, author

 

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: In every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet, essayist, philosopher

 

In science read the newest works; in literature read the oldest.

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, novelist, playwright