This post is for all of our fellow bookworms out there! We like to encourage parents to read to their children, but we also like to encourage everyone to read for themselves too. A 2015 survey found that 27% of Americans did not read a book within the past year, but it also found that 80% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 had. So despite what some may say, it seems likely that this younger generation is made up of more avid readers that the generation before it.

We hope that these famous quotes about reading will inspire you! Bookworms, you can nod along and maybe jot down a few to bring up at your next social gathering when the topic turns to reading!

Reading Quotes

“Be awesome! Be a book nut!”
— Dr. Seuss

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”
— Joyce Carol Oates

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
— C.S. Lewis

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
— Ernest Hemingway

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
— Oscar Wilde

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
— Groucho Marx

“You should never read just for “enjoyment.” Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick “hard books.” Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, “I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.” Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of “literature”? That means fiction, too, stupid.”
— John Waters

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
— Stephen King

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
— Harper Lee

“We read to know that we are not alone.”
— C.S. Lewis

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
— Virginia Woolf

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
— Dr. Seuss

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
— Gustave Flaubert

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
— Maya Angelou

“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”
— Malcolm X

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
— Voltaire

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
— C.S. Lewis

“The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.”
— J.K. Rowling

“It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.”
— Stephen Wright