32 Inspirational Reading Quotes For Students

In every library, there is a single book to answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.Olivia Caliban, A Series of Unfortunate Events, S2.Ep1: The Austere Academy: Part One

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.Joseph Brodsky, At a press conference at the Library of Congress, Washington (May 17, 1991)

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.John Green, An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

When we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

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, Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.Helen Keller, The World I Live In (1908)

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 William Eliot, The Happy Life (ed. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1896), Page 20

Books are in the holy shape. They are silent, and yet they speak directly into the imagination. You can burn them, but they are more powerful than fire. All the knowledge of the ancient ones are put into them.Paris, See, S1.Ep2: Message in a Bottle

One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel (2010)

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.Andre Dubus, Meditations from a Movable Chair (1998)

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.Henry David Thoreau, Letter to B. B. Wiley (Concord, April 26, 1857)

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)

There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (2011)

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.William Somerset Maugham, Books and You (1940)

That’s what books are for, to travel without moving an inch.Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (2003)

The reading of all the great books is like conversing with the best people of earlier times.René Descartes, Discourse on method and Meditations (ed. Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), Page 6

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means.Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (1980)

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.William Styron, Conversations with William Styron (1985)

Any one who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, with extravagant enthusiasm.Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (1922)

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read – ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way (1845)

When you read an enormous number of books, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not be useful for a long time. But then, suddenly, like a strike of lightning or a grand piano falling out of a window, an opportunity arises to use the information gleaned from even the most unlikely piece of reading.Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events, S2.Ep8: The Hostile Hospital: Part Two

The things you’re looking for are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Even books that do not provide the answers we seek can still help us to ask better questions.Diana Bishop, A Discovery of Witches, S2.Ep7

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

It seems as though I have learned all I know of life in books.Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938)

To learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.Victor Hugo, Les misérables (1862)

Have read little and understood less.James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Think before you speak. Read before you think.Frances Ann Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994)

You can read the whole future of mankind in the past.Sidney Sheldon, If Tomorrow Comes (1985)