159 Best Reading Quotes To Inspire More Success

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If you are looking for an incredible selection of reading quotes you’re in the right place.

Reading has so many great benefits; it’s fun, calming, entertaining, and inspires learning.

It’s often said that readers are leaders.

Nearly all of the most successful people in the world read lots of books every year.

These quotes about reading can help to inspire more success in your life.

Shares these reading quotes with your friends, family, and loved ones.

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Right, let’s jump into this list of reading quotes.

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More Reading Quotes

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. W. Somerset Maugham

I’m reading so much and exposing myself to so many new ideas. It almost feels like the chemistry and the structure of my brain is changing so rapidly sometimes.
Emma Watson

This week I’ve been reading a lot and doing little work. That’s the way things ought to be. That’s surely the road to success. Anne Frank

Think before you speak. Read before you think. Fran Lebowitz

Wherever I am, if I’ve got that book with me, I’ve got a place I can go and be happy. J.K. Rowling

Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.
Ben Okri

To know a man’s library is, in some measure, to know a man’s mind. Geraldine Brooks

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. Mortimer J. Adler

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. Harold Bloom

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
Henry Miller

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. François Mauriac

Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes. A.L. Kennedy

Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.
Walter Moers

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. P.J. O’Rourke

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know. Alberto Manguel

A room without books is like a body without a soul. Cicero

Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.
Diane Duane

Books are both our luxuries and our daily bread. Henry Stevens

No. I can survive well enough on my own—if given the proper reading material. Sarah J. Maas

Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape — I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read. Christian Bauman

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
Lemony Snicket

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed. Orhan Pamuk

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach. Roberto Bolaño

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head. Paul Auster

The world belongs to those who read. Rick Holland

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be. Italo Calvino

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Jane Austen

Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have. Lloyd Alexander

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally and often far more worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond. C.S. Lewis

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to selfchosen ignorance. Atwood H. Townsend

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
Kate DiCamillo

He that loves reading has everything within his reach. William Godwin

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. Paul Sweeney

Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible. Barack Obama

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.
Emma Thompson

Reading is a gift. It’s something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape. Richard Carlson

Reading brings us unknown friends. Honore de Balzac

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. Charles Baudelaire

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
Boris Pasternak

Reading… a vacation for the mind… Dave Barry

I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve. Montesquieu

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world. Jeanette Winterson

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
Harry Truman

You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book. John Waters

You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free. Paul Rand

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better. George R.R. Martin

Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education.
Donalyn Miller

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’ Helen Exley

A wellread woman is a dangerous creature. Lisa Kleypas

Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. Alan Bennett

What a blessing it is to love books as I love them; to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
Thomas Babington Macaulay

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. Mortimer J. Alder

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. John Locke

I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. C.S. Lewis

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
Maya Angelou

My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. Malcolm X

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. C.S. Lewis

The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream. Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words. Eric Ripert

Reading is that fruitful miracle of communication in the midst of solitude.
Marcel Proust

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. Roald Dahl

I wouldn’t be a songwriter if it wasn’t for books that I loved as a kid. I think that when you can escape into a book it trains your imagination to think big and to think that more can exist than what you see. Taylor Swift

Motivational Reading Quotes

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read. Jules Verne

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Joseph Addison

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read. Lemony Snicket

The ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. Malcolm X

Beware of the person of one book. Thomas Aquinas

An hour spent reading is one stolen from paradise.
Thomas Wharton

We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth. John Lubbock

If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads. Sherman Alexie

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. Anna Quindlen

Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.
Holbrook Jackson

When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly. Chloe Thurlow

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

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already. George Orwell

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R.R. Martin

It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book… from the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way. Gordon B. Hinckley

That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library. Aphra Behn

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. Italo Calvino

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.
Lisa See

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own. Ruta Sepetys

Books are like oxygen to a deepsea diver,’ she had once said. ‘Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles. Alan Bradley

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we are and may become. Ursula K. LeGuin

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while. Malorie Blackman

Take a good book to bed with you books do not snore. Thea Dorn

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them. Arnold Lobel

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

The world was hers for the reading. Betty Smith

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

I can survive well enough on my own if given the proper reading material. Sarah J. Maas

Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.
Lena Dunham

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. Annie Dillard

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

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. Mary Wortley Montagu

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Ruth Rendell

Classic – a book which people praise and don’t read. Mark Twain

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. Saul Bellow

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world. Napoléon Bonaparte

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Fernando Pessoa

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. Gary Paulsen

Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map. Stephen King

Reading, the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay. William Styron

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
Anna Quindlen

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. Rene Descartes

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. Frederick Douglass

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall. Roald Dahl

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
Louis L’Amour

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand. Ezra Pound

Inspirational Reading Quotes

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page. Naomi Shihab Nye

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
Robert Louis Stevenson

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people. Will Rogers

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. Oscar Wilde

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

There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.
Jacqueline Kennedy

The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much. Josh Lanyon

I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough… the more one reads the more one sees we have to read. John Adams

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage. Roald Dahl

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
George Bernard Shaw

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Lloyd Alexander

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. Mary Schmich

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. Gaston Bachelard

Books are a uniquely portable magic.
Stephen King

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish. S.I. Hayakawa

Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really. Jacqueline Kelly

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island. Walt Disney

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. E. Nesbit

Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read. Neil Gaiman

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. Charles W. Eliot

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.
Benedict Cumberbatch

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge. Alberto Manguel

You can never be wise unless you love reading. Samuel Johnson

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book. Jane Smiley

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.
Lawrence Durrell

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx

Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again. Louisa May Alcott

A good book is an event in my life. Stendhal

I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.
Elbert Hubbard

It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book. Maureen Corrigan

My life is a reading list. John Irving

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. Carl Sagan

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of selfrespect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.
David McCullough Jr.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. Elizabeth Hardwick

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one. George R.R. Martin

Literature is my Utopia. Helen Keller

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. Harper Lee

To Sum Up

Hopefully you have enjoyed this big list of reading quotes.

There are lots to motivate and inspire you every day.

I’d love to know which reading quotes are your favourites.

Drop them in the comments below.