Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.
-Dr Seuss
Books are powerful. When you open them up and read them, they can transport you to a different time and a different place. Through books you can explore the far reaches of the solar system or a country you’ve never had the opportunity to visit in person. You can explore the jungles of Africa or the beaches of a tropical island.
Books take you on adventures you never imagined were possible. They introduce you to new worlds, new eras, and different ways of doing things. And in reading books like these, you learn. Your world opens up like never before.
Years ago, I got this spiral bound notebook. And I started writing down a few quotes I liked. Phrases and sayings that resonated with me. For the past 20 years or so, I’ve been adding to this little notebook. Today, I want to share with you 50 quotes all about the pleasures of reading…and all of these quotes came directly from my notebook.

No entertainment is as cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
-Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.
-Montesquieu
Books are always good company if you have the right sort.
-Louisa May Alcott
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
-Lemony Snicket
Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.
Jim Rohn
Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.
-Lena Dunham

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.
-Descartes
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
-CS Lewis
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
-Dr Seuss
Reading brings us unknown friends.
-Honore de Balzoc
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Roald Dahl
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.
-Benjamin Franklin
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
-Louis L’Amour
It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.
-Maureen Corrigan
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
-Jane Smiley
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
-Henry David Thoreau
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
-CS Lewis
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
-Paul Sweeney
There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.
-Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out it a spark.
Victor Hugo
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
-Garrison Keillor

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
-Italo Calvino
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges
If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.
-Roald Dahl
That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.
-Aphra Behn
Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.
-Bill Watterson
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
Emilie Buchwalk
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
-EB White
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have no an excellent library.
-Jane Austen
Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.
-Gary Paulsen

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
-Unknown
Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
-Unknown
Good books are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.
-Unknown
If a book is well written, I always find it too short.
-Jane Austen
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
-Confucius
When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel.
-Charles Dickens
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
-Mark Twain
Books. Helping introverts avoid conversation since 1454.
Unknown
Children should learn that reading is a pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
-Unknown
A child who reads will be an adult who thinks.
-Unknown
I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.
-Emma Thompson

I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.
-JK Rowling
We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read themselves.
-Neil Gaiman
Reading is dreaming with your eyes open.
-Unknown
Never be without a really good book on hand.
-Charlotte Mason
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.
-George R.R. Martin
That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
-Jhumpa Lahiri
Additional Resources:
- Travel the World through Your Imagination: Over 100 Books to Transport You without a Passport
- Escape in the Pages: 21 Books for You to Enjoy
- The Importance of Reading Out Loud and Individually, Part 1

Elizabeth Tatham, founder of Inspiration in the Everyday, is a homeschooling momma of 5 who loves helping other homeschooling mommas create a unique homeschooling adventure your kids will love…without the overwhelm! Join in on the journey with 7 simple steps to make your homeschooling day go faster, easier, and with less tears here.