Reading For Pleasure Quotes

Dear teachers, please make reading and writing fun. Reading and writing shouldn't be a punishment while in school. I ask you to create and teach two electives: "Reading for Pleasure" and "Writing for Pleasure". ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

One of my passions is that children enjoy their time at school - and reading for pleasure can be an important part of that. ~ Charles Clarke

You know what I can't stand?" Kit said as they passed five carts of books that needed to be reshelved. "I can't stand the words "reading for pleasure." All these parents--most of whom haven't read a single book since high school, unless maybe they picked up THE DA VINCE CODE--drag their kids in here every summer and say, 'Find something to read for pleasure,' which just means that most of the time the message these kids are getting is that reading is not pleasurable. Do you see how that works? It's like reading is a punishment. I hate that. ~ Sue Halpern

I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living. ~ Raymond Chandler

I am glad and thankful that my husband forced me to start reading for pleasure, as it took me years to listen to him and pick up a book! ~ Rachel Tucker

what are inside books may not all that necessarily be different from what are outside books at all ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

All reading for pleasure is entertainment. ~ Raymond Chandler

What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place. ~ Malorie Blackman

How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?"

If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?"

Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story... ~ Stephen King

Do you like novels?"
He shook his head. "I usually read for information, not entertainment."
"You disapprove of reading for pleasure?"
"No, it's just that I don't often manage to find the time for it."
"Perhaps that's why you don't sleep well. You need an interlude between work and bedtime."
There was a dry, perfectly timed pause before Harry asked, "What would you suggest?"
Aware of his meaning, Poppy felt a bloom of color emerge from head to toe. Harry seemed to enjoy her discomfiture, not in a mocking way, but as if he found her charming. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The most appealing part is the feeling of learning something true - the pleasure of a truth. For me, that's mostly found in philosophical literature at the moment. ~ Eyvind Kang

I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion ... I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste. ~ Georges Bizet

The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay
the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework. ~ Walt Whitman

[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. ~ John Adams

The pain of regret is far worse than the pain of discipline.

We will never have the anointing, the ministry or the revivals of our heroes if we don't become as disciplined as they were. They went to bed early to get up early to pray, and they fasted for days on end.

We shouldn't just pray to mark it off of our lists or read a few chapters of our Bible each day to keep up with the church Bible reading chart. We must have a deeper purpose for doing these tasks.

Discipline without direction is drudgery. In other words, discipline has to have a purpose to drive it each and every day.

The price for spiritual change is expensive, but the rewards are far greater.

The world's ways, ideologies, and influence cannot be present in a life dedicated to Jesus because consecration's purpose is for us to be different from the world. And, for that matter, if we are separate from the world, then sin must not be a part of our lives either. Sin ruins a life of consecration.

It would be a shame to believe that holiness is nothing more than rules or guidelines we are to live by. Holiness and consecration flow from a life given to the spiritual disciplines, a life we can only maintain by continuing to seek for Him daily.

Your pursuit will never be greater than your disciplines.

No man is greater than his prayer life.

Even though Jesus requires us to pray, praying is not to be done out of duty, but it ~ Nathan Whitley

I was maybe 19 years old. And I always remember that it was a great feeling of happiness. Because of that, I said to Myles that it's no different for me if I am read­ing poetry or if I am reading Marx. I try to get the beauty in the very act of reading, you see. This is for me something that many times teachers don't try to do. ~ Paulo Freire

Luce didn't wait for Daniel to lean forward and kiss her. Instead, she pressed her lips to his, relishing his moan of surprised pleasure, wanting to cleanse him of any pain he'd ever felt at losing her.
Kissing Daniel was somewhere between exhilaratingly new and unmistakably familiar, like a childhood memory that felt dreamlike until photographic evidence was found in an old box in the attic. Luce felt as if a hangar full of monumental photographs had been discovered, and all those buried moments had been released from their captivity into the recesses of her soul.
She was kissing him now, but strangely she was kissing him then. She could almost touch the history of their love, taste its essence on her tongue. Her lips traced Daniel's just now, but also in another kiss they'd shared, an older kiss, a kiss like this one, with her mouth just there and his arms around her waist like that. He slipped his tongue against her teeth, and that recalled a handful of other kisses, too, every one of them intoxicating. When he passed his hand across her back, she felt a hundred shivers like this one. And when her eyes fluttered open and shut, the sight of him through her tangled lashed seemed a thousand kisses deep. ~ Lauren Kate

For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres, excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

[As a young man] I sought thrills! I found them in Christ. I looked for something that would bring perfect joy! I found it in Christ. I looked for something that would bring pleasure and that would satisfy the deepest longing of my heart! I found it in Christ. And my life has never been the same. ~ Billy Graham

He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet,serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading and sedentary pursuits. ~ Jane Austen

If this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. ~ Dorothy Parker

working, for me, was never about getting rich - it was about the thrill of doing good work, the pleasure of solving problems ~ Marc Randolph

Friendship should be a private pleasure, not a public boast. I loathe those braggarts who are forever trying to invest themselves with importance by calling important people by their first names in or out of print. Such first-naming for effect makes me cringe. ~ John Mason Brown

There are no higher values, people in the West say. Live by your own instincts, for yourself, for your own pleasure... In America, you see, you're not supposed to take care of the elderly. You're supposed to look after yourself, chase your dreams. But what happens when you grow old? Will your individualism save you? ~ Karan Mahajan

It is always a fashion to advise disputants to sit round a table and solve disputes by dialogue and discussion, and not to resort to violent confrontation and wars. Whether in national disputes or in international conflicts parties are being constantly advised to avoid wars and to negotiate, while governments continue to oppress, persecute, and even commit genocide.

No doubt, it is a very salutary advice and a noble ideal, quite often well-meaning, too. Nobody fights a war for the pleasure of it. But the trouble is, it has never been pragmatic ideal, and never will be so long as governments being what they are and the tyranny of the majority and armed might being the ruling principle of democracy…The weaker is left to its own devices to shake off tyranny and oppression.

If the weaker side listened to this idealistic advice and waited till the end of time for a solution to its problems there would have been no wars of independence. If the American colonies of George III's England listened to such advice and continued to be governed by England and to pay taxes to England without representation in the Parliament at Westminster, there would have been no American War of Independence, no American Declaration of Independence, and there would be no United States of America today…" (pp.279-280) ~ V. Navaratnam

She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public was a beloved child. She'd parade me into town, smiling and teasing me, tickling me as she spoke with people on the sidewalks. When we got home, she'd trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door, and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I had done to displease her.

I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends come over for afternoon drinks. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was suppose to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching.

My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how, wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother. ~ Gillian Flynn

In that moment, as they stood smiling at one another, Charlotte was conscious of several contradictory sensations, of which the chief were these: annoyance with herself for being incapable of governing her own actions, satisfaction that Sidney had won this very minor victory over her, amusement, embarrassment - an odd something between perturbation and pleasure - and above all else, a flutter of joyful spirits which made her feel she had strayed somehow into a most unfamiliar world. ~ Jane Austen

Whatever the situation may be, in the recollection of death there is reward and merit. For even the man engrossed in the world benefits from it by acquiring an aversion to this world, since it spoils his contentment and the fullness of his pleasure; and everything which spoils for man his pleasures and his appetites is one of the means of deliverance. ~ Al-Ghazali

Miserable humanity was clamouring from the depths of its abyss of suffering, and the clamour swept along, sending a shudder down every spine, for one and all were plunged in agony, refusing to die, longing to compel God to grant them eternal life. Ah ! life, life! That was what all those unfortunates, who had come from so far, amid so many obstacles, wanted - that was the one boon they asked for, in their wild desire to live it over again, to live it always! O Lord, whatever our misery, whatever the torment of our life may be, cure us, grant that we may begin to live again and suffer once more what we have suffered already. However unhappy we may be, to be is what we wish. It is not heaven that we ask Thee for, it is earth; and grant that we may leave it at the latest possible moment , never leave it indeed, if such be Thy good pleasure. And even when we no longer implore a physical cure, but a moral favour, it is still happiness that we ask for; happiness , the thirst for which alone consumes us. Oh Lord, grant that we may be happy and healthy; let us live, ay, let us live forever! ~ Emile Zola

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~ Samuel Johnson

I love the chameleon nature of this business [acting]. I always have. Sometimes I'm not as recognizable as somebody else and I may not have gotten a role, but for me, acting is not a competition. I've just kept my head down and kept working, and had the great pleasure of working with some amazing people and playing some extraordinary and extreme characters. ~ Ray Stevenson

She was slowly being overwhelmed by his scent, the feel of his hands on her and the taste of him. His arms tightened around her until she felt almost weightless on her toes. His lips moved along her neck and she heard the soft sigh of pleasure escape her lips and realized there was no choice for her to make. She'd already made it the day she'd met him. ~ Donna Augustine

For people who are readers, reading is important to them. ~ Jeff Bezos

I tremble with pleasure when I
think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and
the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss
the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. ~ Oscar Wilde

He's persistently pursuing me in lust, and I've fallen hard for him – really hard. My head feels like it could explode, and I'm not sure if it'll be in pleasure or confusion. ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

The latter's boast that he had never read a book for pleasure in his life did not predispose me in his favour. ~ Anthony Powell

One has the sense of her deciding roughly at Page 2 whether or not a book is worthy; reading the rest of it to gather evidence for her case; spending some quality time with the Thesaurus; and then taking a large blunt hammer and pounding the message home. ~ Ben Yagoda

Our slower pace of life, our thoughtfulness, our spiritual and intellectual depth, and our listening abilities are prophetic qualities for the evangelical community, calling us to a renewed understanding of God and a fresh reading on the abundant life Jesus came to give us. Yet because of the extroverted bias in many of our churches, introverts are leading double lives. We are masquerading as extroverts in order to find acceptance, yet we feel displaced and confused. We are weary of fighting our introversion, and we long to live faithfully as the people we were created to be. ~ Adam S. McHugh

I'm a voice for children's books and children's reading. ~ Malorie Blackman

What do you seek--God? you ask with a smile.

I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached--and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics--which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker. For myself, I enjoy answering polls as much as anyone and take pleasure in giving intelligent replies to all questions.

Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? That is to say: Have 98% of Americans already found what I seek or are they so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?

On my honor, I do not know the answer. ~ Walker Percy

Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or
such is the pleasure they experience
they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them. ~ Paulo Coelho

We will look into God's eyes and see what we've always longed to see: the person who made us for his own good pleasure. Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the first time. Why? Because not only will we see God, he will be the lens through which we see everything else - other people, ourselves, and the events of our earthly lives. ~ Randy Alcorn

I think I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising ... I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and people will be like, 'Oh, this person isn't a true feminist because they don't embody this one thing,' and I don't know, often there is a lot of gray area that can be hard to navigate. ~ Lorde

Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away. ~ Peter Enns

Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the author's sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the grotesque figures of the people in Cruikshank's illustrations revealed too clearly the hideous distortions of their souls. What had seemed humorous now appeared diabolic, and in disgust at these two favourites he turned to Walter Pater for the repose and dignity of a classic spirit.

But presently he wondered if this spirit were not in itself of a marble quality, frigid and lifeless, contrary to the purpose of nature. 'I have often thought', he said to himself, 'that there is something evil in the austere worship of beauty for its own sake.' He had never thought so before, but he liked to think that this impulse of fancy was the result of mature consideration, and with this satisfaction he composed himself for sleep.

He woke two or three times in the night, an unusual occurrence, but he was glad of it, for each time he had been dreaming horribly of these blameless Victorian works…

It turned out to be the Boy's Gulliver's Travels that Granny had given him, and Dicky had at last to explain his rage with the devil who wrote it to show that men were worse than beasts and the human race a washout. A boy who never had good school reports had no right to be so morbidly sensitive as to penetrate to the underlying cynicism of Swift's delightful fable, and th ~ Margaret Irwin

She was a damn good kisser, maybe the best I'd ever had the immense pleasure of kissing. It helped that her lips were like pillows and she tasted sweet. Not like strawberries or peaches. Sunshine and sweet - her own brand of it. Plus there was desperation in the kiss, an understated but raw passion I couldn't recall ever experiencing before.
Or maybe that had been me. Maybe I'd been the passionate, desperate one. No matter. Either way, she'd stolen my breath, robbed me of thought and sense. She was a master thief, and I loved her for it. ~ Penny Reid

If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgement, to common sense, or why they would say "I know, I know" when I urged a little reasonableness on them, and why it meant "It doesn't matter, I just don't care." That's what the saints and the martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true. I remember in those days loving God for the existence of love and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude, right down in the depths of my misery. I realized many things that I am at a loss to express. And of course those feelings become milder with time, which is a mercy. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories. ~ Kevin J. Anderson

There is a Dutch word, uitwaaien, to walk against the wind for pleasure. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. ~ Graham Greene

When a liberal professor takes enormous intellectual liberties by openly promoting an ideological agenda to his students, the cry of academic freedom rings across the quads. But when a conservative professor is punished for publishing an article in a politically incorrect journal, there is no defense of intellectual diversity. What is billed as academic neutrality turns out to be a smoke screen for the relativistic liberal agenda.

Today's relativists could not have gotten away with their double standards in a culture that prized truth. But a gradual, sustained assault on truth has been carried out through the soft underbelly of Western culture: the arts. In film, music, and television, the themes of sensual pleasure and individual choice have drowned out the tried-and-true virtues of faith, family, self-sacrifice, duty, honor, patriotism, and fidelity in marriage. Cultural mechanics have wielded their tools to dull the public's sense of reasonable limits. In an Age of Consent, the silly and the profound are becoming indistinguishable. ~ Gary L. Bauer

No mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of the victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State. ~ Elias Canetti

So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how impersonal and grasping our love was, pinging around the universe, hoping for a host to give form to our wishes. ~ Emma Cline

It's what the Pixies always said about music - they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it. ~ Jonny Greenwood

I drive a lot. Just for pleasure. Sometimes I'll get in the Cadillac and drive around the city or the country, kind of trying to get lost basically. Y'know, just see where roads lead. ~ Frank Black

'Legs are for men's pleasure, breasts are for babies'.' - Lib McGovern ~ Pat Frank

Take the gesture, the action of writing. I have an almost obsessive relation to writing instruments. I often switch from one pen to another just for the pleasure of it. I try out new ones. I have far too many pens - I don't know what to do with all of them! And yet, as soon as I see a new one, I start craving it. I cannot keep myself from buying them. ~ Roland Barthes