Readers ON Reading

Centuries-- even millennia-- come and go, but reading and the love of it remains. As we move into the 21st century, we offer these observations from the past about the fundamental skill of an educated mind. The Reading Page will not appear next week but will return Jan. 2.

“Reading maketh a full man.”-- Francis Bacon

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“Reading in general is one of my methods of recuperation; consequently it is a part of that which enables me to escape from myself, to wander in strange sciences and strange souls.”-- Friedrich Nietzche

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“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s voice, another’s soul.”-- Joyce Carol Oates

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“Kids hit a wall and that wall is called fourth grade. At that moment, a kid shifts from learning to read to having to read in order to learn.”-- David Britt, president, Children’s Television Network

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“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.”-- Aldous Huxley

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

Source: “The reader’s Quotation Book”, The Delights of Reading”