It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.

The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.

The book you don't read can't help.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.

When literacy died, so had history.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

The sad truth about political saints of any given past is that nobody but a scholar will take the trouble to read their complete works and try to see them whole.

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.