A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

The gods‘ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

The little man is still a man.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

I cannot live without books.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

It’s a lot of fun to fight.

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

I read poetry to save time.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

A home without books is a body without soul.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

Life must be lived as play.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.