"We are as liable to be corrupted by books as by companions." - Fielding
"The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth."-Anton Chekhov
"Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year." - Horace Mann
“The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.” – Mark Twain
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." - Henry David Thoreau
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all." - Henry David Thoreau
"Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
"By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing, or at least tickle your thinking." -William Safire
"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.” - Flannery O'Connornnor |
“'I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel.' -- Such is the common cant. '– And what are you reading, Miss --?''Oh! it is only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” – Jane Austen
"If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation. For every book you read that is anti-Christian, make it your business to read one that presents the other side of the picture; if one isn’t satisfactory read others. Don’t think that you have to abandon reason to be a Christian. A book that might help you is The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson. Another is Newman’s The Grammar of Assent. To find out about faith, you have to go to the people who have it . . ." – Flannery O'Connor, Letter to Alfred Corn, in The Habit of Being
“This has always been a dilemma for me: What am I to read? I have always tried to choose what was most essential. So much has been published and not everything is valuable and useful. It is important to know how to choose and to consult others about what is worth reading.” (St. John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way, New York: Warner Books, 2004, pp.93-94).
“In my reading and in my studies I always tried to achieve a harmony between faith, reason, and the heart. These are not separate areas, but are profoundly interconnected, each giving life to the other.” (St. John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way, New York: Warner Books, 2004, p.97).
“As a publisher I learnt much about the place of reading in the Catholic mind. Without revelation, the reader can know life as he has met it in his own experience and in literature, but he cannot know what life is all about – why man exists, where if anywhere life is leading. He may know what we call the flesh and blood of life without knowing the shape of reality, knowing a great deal of the parts, but of the totality not a hint. Only too often the theologian is the exact opposite, knowing the general shape of reality but not the flesh and blood. For a balanced knowledge of reality both are needed.” - F. J. Sheed, The Instructed Heart: sounding at four depths. Our Sunday Visitor Press, Huntington, IN, 1979, p. 18
"If a man wants to be always in God's company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us." - St. Isidore of Seville
"All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection. By reading we learn what we did not know; by reflection we retain what we have learned. The conscientious reader will be more concerned to carry out what he has read than merely to acquire knowledge of it. In reading we aim at knowing, but we must put into practice what we have learned in our course of study." - St. Isidore of Seville
"Don't neglect your spiritual reading. - Reading has made many saints." - St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way n. 116
“You write. 'In my spiritual reading I build up a store of fuel. - It looks like a lifeless heap, but I often find that my memory, of its own accord, will draw from it material which fills my prayer with life and inflames my thanksgiving after Communion.'" - St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way n. 117
"We cannot leave our books aside like Brother Gerundio and set off to preach. What I want is to have all the arguments of good doctrine fixed and clear in my mind; that is why I go over the traditional treatises of theology. And I also read literature, because words are the clothing. Fides ex auditu. (Romans 10:17).We have to give doctrine, good doctrine, and present it to people in an attractive way. The traditional arguments can be dressed in literary style and brought to the common man, without becoming common." - St. Josemaria Escriva