All Quotes By Tag: Reading

“Acquiring knowledge is the most fruitful effort.”

“Knowledge can be acquired by education, reading, communicating and observing, but also simply by living.”

“Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries—Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Café Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Café Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own.”

“We awaken by asking the right questions.”

“Remember that people are only guests in your story – the same way you are only a guest in theirs – so make the chapters worth reading.”

“Being a reader has brought me much joy, laughter, and rich experience. But reading has also wounded me. The sacrament of reading has plowed me open and sown seeds of empathy that have taken root in deep soil. Over the years, reading has caused me to grow from a shallow, self-absorbed youth to one who seeks out the pain of the world. Reading has burdened me with the welfare of my fellow human, but sometimes the burden proves too heavy for my narrow shoulders.”

“Read. You can always talk with another reader.”

“An attentive reader will always learn more, and more quickly, from good authors than from life.”

“I have a feeling we’re going to have a lot of time to read in the next few days or weeks.” She thought about it and said, “Jesus. How long do you think things will go on like this?”

“Sitting here I glance over my right shoulder at the little row of books, red and green and blue, which stand waiting for my hand, offering their accumulated riches. I think of the years that may be in store for me, and of all the pages I may turn.”

“Hard life… write more! Life sucks… write more! No matter what don’t stop. Keep to the grind and don’t let up. Somewhere out there is your ramp to success. Forget about the exits or the shortcuts along the way. Stay on the highway and when the ramp comes… take it and go!”

“Confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we’ve chosen to have things. Today it is a luxury to read what Socrates said, not because the books are expensive, but because our time is scarce.”

“[When] he’s here, he’s always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he’s crazy…Don’t tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.”

“The great opposition to reading is what I allow to fill my time instead of reading. To say we have no time to read is not really true; we simply have chosen to use our time for other things, or have allowed our time to be filled to the exclusion of reading. So don’t add reading to your to-do list. Just stop doing the things that keep you from doing it. But read.”

“Having come to the conclusion that there was so much to do that she didn’t know where to start, Mrs Fowler decided not to start at all. She went to the library, took Diary of a Nobody from the shelves and, returning to her wicker chair under the lime tree, settled down to waste what precious hours still remained of the day.”