19 verified quotes from 12 writers, c. 335 BC to 1894.
Francis Bacon’s essay Of Studies supplies the classic lines on reading: some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few chewed and digested, and reading makes a full man. Benjamin Franklin remembers spending all his pocket money on books as a boy, and Emily Dickinson finds no frigate like a book for taking us lands away.
Jane Austen defends the novel twice: in Northanger Abbey anyone who takes no pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid, and in Pride and Prejudice Caroline Bingley declares there is no enjoyment like reading. Every quote below was matched word for word in the full text of the public-domain edition we link.
What “verified” means, and what we leave out: How we verify.
Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular
Our note: Aristotle explains why he ranks poetry above a plain record of events.
Verified in the full text of Poetics on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1974
I have no more made my book than my book has made me
Our note: Montaigne on how writing about himself shaped him in turn.
Verified in the full text of Of Giving the Lie on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3600 · Collected in Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Our note: From Bacon's short essay on the uses of study.
Verified in the full text of Of Studies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer, Peter Paul Rubens, 1597
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Our note: From "Of Studies."
Verified in the full text of Of Studies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer, Peter Paul Rubens, 1597
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; …
Our note: From "Of Studies."
Verified in the full text of Of Studies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: The Musicians, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), 1597
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them
Our note: Bacon on three ways of treating books, and which one is worth copying.
Verified in the full text of Of Studies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: The Musicians, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), 1597
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good
Our note: Johnson's advice on reading, as Boswell recorded it.
Verified in the full text of The Life of Samuel Johnson on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1564 · Collected in Life of Johnson
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.
Our note: Franklin remembers his boyhood in Boston.
Verified in the full text of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #148
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
Our note: Said by Caroline Bingley, who is only pretending to read to impress Mr. Darcy.
Verified in the full text of Pride and Prejudice on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1342
Painted the same decade: Waterfall at Mont-Dore, Achille-Etna Michallon, 1818
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Our note: Henry Tilney teases Catherine Morland, who fears he looks down on novels.
Verified in the full text of Northanger Abbey on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #121
Painted the same decade: General Étienne-Maurice Gérard (1773–1852), Jacques Louis David, 1816
…that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith
Our note: Coleridge on what a reader gives to a poem or story about the supernatural.
Verified in the full text of Biographia Literaria on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #6081
Painted the same decade: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Talleyrand, Pierre Paul Prud'hon, 1817
The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness
Our note: What reading, and the speeches in The Columbian Orator, did to the young Douglass.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers
Our note: On what learning to read taught him about his condition.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: Study of a Female Nude, Henri Lehmann, 1840
I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.
Our note: Douglass on how reading opened his eyes to his condition before he saw a way out of it.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
Our note: The wry opening sentence of Anne Brontë's first novel, on what stories can teach.
Verified in the full text of Agnes Grey on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #767
Painted the same decade: Study of a Female Nude, Henri Lehmann, 1840
…if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
Our note: From Ruskin's lecture 'Of Kings' Treasuries', on books and reading.
Verified in the full text of Sesame and Lilies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1293
Painted the same decade: The Third-Class Carriage, Honoré Daumier, 1864
…all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
Our note: From the same lecture.
Verified in the full text of Sesame and Lilies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1293
Painted the same decade: The Spanish Singer, Edouard Manet, 1860
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all
Our note: From the preface Wilde added when the novel came out as a book in 1891.
Verified in the full text of The Picture of Dorian Gray on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #174
Painted the same decade: Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, Paul Gauguin, 1896
There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.
Our note: Dickinson on books as ships that carry the reader anywhere.
Verified in the full text of There is no frigate like a book on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #12242 · Collected in Poems by Emily Dickinson
Painted the same decade: Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, Paul Gauguin, 1896
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