Quotes about Reading

The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter?

Even a cursory perusal reveals a very great range of reference. There is hardly a single human action that has not been called—in one way or another—an act of love. Nor is the range confined to the human sphere. If you proceed far enough in your reading, you will find that love has been attributed to almost everything in the universe; that is, everything that exists has been said by someone either to love or to be loved—or both.

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

The year after How to Read a Book was published, a parody of it appeared under the title How to Read Two Books; and Professor I. A. Richards wrote a serious treatise entitled How to Read a Page.

Unless you read it quickly you will fail to see the unity of the story. Unless you read intensely you will fail to see the details.

Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.

A good speed reading course should therefore teach you to read at many different speeds, not just one speed that is faster than anything you can manage now. It should enable you to vary your rate of reading in accordance with the nature and complexity of the material.

One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.

Concentration is another name for what we have called activity in reading. The good reader reads actively, with concentration.

Whatever approach you take to reading the Bible, don't let yourself become a slave to the method. Don't get so caught up in the mechanics that you miss the point.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Therefore beware of the contemplative who says that theology is all straw before he has ever bothered to read any.