Reading and Writing Quotes
Top 15 Reading and Writing
Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read
in order to live.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French writer (pictured right).
No 2
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
- Samuel Johnson (1709–84), English writer, pictured right.
No 3
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), American writer, pictured right.
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711), pictured right, the French poet, says editing
is the hard part of writing:
Of every four words I write, I strike out three.
Blaise Pascal (1623–62),
French scientist and philosopher, pictured right, makes a similar comment
I have made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
No 4
Better to write for yourself and have no public than write for the public and have no self.
- Cyril Connolly (1903-74), English writer, pictured right.
No 5
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 (1561–1626),
English philosopher, pictured right.
No 6
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
- Walter Bagehot (1826–77), English economist, pictured right.
No 7
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power.
- Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), English writer, pictured right.
No 8
No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.
- Eleanor
Roosevelt (1884-1962), American human rights campaigner , pictured right.
No 9
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
- Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), American
president, pictured right.
No 10
Ideas are to literature what light is to painting.
- Paul Bourget (1852–1935), French writer, pictured right.
No 11
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking.
- John Maynard
Keynes (1883-1946), English economist, pictured right.
No 12
'Classic'. A book which people praise and don't read.
- Mark
Twain (1835-1910), American writer, pictured right.
Theodore (Ted) Levitt (1925-2006), pictured right, the
American marketing writer, also comments:
If people don't read what you write, then what you write is a museum piece.
No 13
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
- Frederick
Douglass (1818-1895), pictured right, African American abolitionist.
No 14
We shouldn’t teach great books, we should teach a love of reading,
- B.F. Skinner (1904-90),
pictured right, American psychologist.
No 15
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not...it is the power that enables
us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
- J.K. Rowling (1965-), English
writer, pictured right
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