Broad Reading Quotes

(Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with "girls'stories" such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I don't remember learning to read, but the first thing I remember reading is a science fiction novel. ~ Vonda N. McIntyre

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Education should be as broad as man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed. ~ Ralph Caplan

I shall never exchange reading for riches. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Within a week I walked the streets of Tel-Aviv, I wandered around Budapest and found myself admiring the Architecture of Paris. That's the power of great literature. ~ Byron Ortiz

[I]f one is to learn from history, one should not concentrate solely upon a single portion of an era but rather make a thorough investigation of the many complex and mutually contradictory factors that made the era what it was. One must take the single portion and fit it into its proper place. One must evaluate the various elements that went into giving it its special character. Thus one must look at history from a perspective that offers a broad and balanced view.
This, I believe, is what is meant by learning from history. For any man's view of his own era is limited, and he has great difficulty in trying to obtain a comprehensive picture of his time. Precisely because of this, then, the comprehensive picture offered by history both provides information and constitutes a pattern for one's guidance. A man who lives bound by the limits of the minute-to-minute present is able, by means of the broad vision offered by time-transcending history, to avail himself of a comprehensive picture of his world and so correct his own narrow view of things. Such is the enjoyable privilege that history offers men.
Learning from history should never mean fastening upon a particular aspect of a particular era and using it as a model to reform a particular aspect of the present. To take out of the jigsaw puzzle of the past a piece with a set form and attempt to fit it into the present is not an enterprise that could have a happy outcome. To do so is to toy with history, a pastime fit ~ Yukio Mishima

With plays that require any kind of reading program, I'm reading for a couple of years before using the material. ~ Tom Stoppard

I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective. ~ Mallory Ortberg

I love you, Half-Pint. Love that little baby. You understand where I'm at with all of that?" ( ... ) "I know you aren't on the same page as me just yet, Cora, and for right now I'm happy enough we're reading the same book. Eventually you have to turn the page, though, you got me? ~ Jay Crownover

France placed the state above society , democracy above constitutionalism, and equality above liberty. As a result, for much of the nineteenth century it was democratic, with broad suffrage and elections, but hardly liberal. it was certainly a less secure home for individual freedom than was England or America. ~ Fareed Zakaria

That month he developed the habit every night of picking up the Bible the last thing before he went to bed and reading a few verses, and from thinking a prayer and from thinking thanksgiving, he advanced to the place where he boldly, in the silence and serenity of the little room, got down on his knees and prayed the prayer of thanksgiving. Then he followed it by the prayer of asking. He found himself asking God to take care of all the world, to help everyone who needed help; to put the spirit and courage into every heart to fare forth and to attempt the Great Adventure on its own behalf... Then he arose, in some way fortified, a trifle bigger, slightly prouder, more capable, more of a man that he had been the day before. He had asked for help and he knew that he was receiving help, and he knew that never again would he be ashamed to face any man, or any body of men, and tell them that he had asked for help and that help had been forthcoming, and that the same experience lay in the reach of every man if he would only take the Lord at His word; if he would only do what all men are so earnestly urged to do--believe. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

In an instant it became clear to us that the nearly - but not quite - perfect uniformity of the advancing columns, dissolving chaotically in the clash of the fronts, reformed itself after he battle in a far more perfect form: as the utterly precise, utterly indistinguishable rows of crosses in the heroes' cemeteries, where the lines spread out into a broad perspective, moving in its spare monotony, cut at right angles and chopped in blocks, so that an absolute order was finally achieved. ~ Gregor Von Rezzori

Universal literacy, taken for granted today, was a direct result of the Reformation's reemphasis upon the centrality of Bible reading, ~ Gene Edward Veith Jr.

EPISODE 2 As we there are where are we are we there from tomtittot to teetootomtotalitarian. Tea tea too oo. With his broad and hairy face, to Ireland a disgrace. SIC. Whom will comes over. Who to caps ever. And howelse do we hook our hike to find that pint of porter place? Am shot, says the big-guard. ~ James Joyce

My greatest strength as a child, I realize now, was my imagination. While every other kid was reading and writing, I had seven whole hours a day to practice my imagination. When do you get that space in your life, ever? ~ Barbara Corcoran

It's Earth Day today. Let me tell you something about polar bears. They're endangered but you have to be careful because a polar bear is one of the few animals that will stalk a human. If you go to where polar bears live, it might stalk you and when you're on the plane going home, it might be behind you reading. ~ Craig Ferguson

The best endings never end; they begin ~ Ela Crain

Spending one hour with Isaias is far more worthwhile, rewarding and enlightening than reading ten books ~ Meles Zenawi

Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down. ~ Diane Setterfield

I have suffered from bullying in many ways, from bullying in school due to my disability in reading, to digital abuse that I deal with on a daily basis. I'd like to tell the kids that are being bullied that no one should have to deal with the abuse, ever! ~ Bella Thorne

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels. ~ Grace Lin

The dirty little secret about growing up as a boy is if you're not any good at it, they will torture you daily until you have the good graces to kill yourself. The posturing and the dominance games are almost inescapable. It's hard to walk from one end of school to the other without getting shoulder-checked in the halls. Locker rooms are a forgotten circle of Hell. God forbid anyone ever catch you sketching flowers in class, or reading a book that's "for girls." Maybe for people who really are boys, that stuff works. Maybe it fits for them. ~ April Daniels

We live without feeling the country beneath our feet,
our words are inaudible from ten steps away.
Any conversation, however brief,
gravitates, gratingly, toward the Kremlin's mountain man.
His greasy fingers are thick as worms,
his words weighty hammers slamming their target.
His cockroach moustache seems to snicker,
and the shafts of his high-topped boots gleam.
Amid a rabble of scrawny-necked chieftains,
he toys with the favors of such homunculi.
One hisses, the other mewls, one groans, the other weeps;
he prowls thunderously among them, showering them with scorn.
Forging decree after decree, like horseshoes,
he pitches one to the belly, another to the forehead,
a third to the eyebrow, a fourth in the eye.
Every execution is a carnival
that fills his broad Ossetian chest with delight. ~ Osip Mandelstam

Reading is one of the important part of being a person. ~ Perry Moore

Historians get to make their living by reading other peoples mail. ~ Unknown

I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story. ~ Willa Cather

Broad shoulders fit snugly under his white shirt, and taut muscles flex in his arm as he grips a tray. He's not a muscle-bound freak though, thank God. I don't like that "I have boulders in my biceps" look that a lot of guys seem to favor these days. ~ Siobhan Davis