For books, Bust out those e-readers, dust off your bookshelves, or head to your local library — Monday, March 3 marks the 17th annual Read Across America Day. Read Across America Day, hosted by the National Education Association on Dr. Seuss’ birthday (March 2), aims to make kids as excited.
In honor of Read Across America Day, we’ve gathered the best reading. These 19 quotes express the undeniably unique power books possess to entertain us, comfort us, challenge us, and inspire us. Reading is lovely, but life’s distractions keep us from curling up with a cup of coffee and a good book. Let these quotes serve as your reminder. And, because it’s only fitting, we’ll start with a quote from Dr. Seuss himself!
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” – Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
“World of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.” – Clarence Shepard Day
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles William Eliot
“All good books are truer than if they really happened, and after you finish reading one, you’ll feel that everything that happened to you belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sadness, the people, the places, and the weather.” – Ernest Hemingway
“I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough… The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.” – John Adams
“Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As one preserves, strengthens, and invigorates health, the other keeps virtue (mental health) alive, treasured, and confirmed.” – Joseph Addison
“A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” – Madeleine L’Engle
“If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.” – François Fénelon
“A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.” – Andrew Lang
“The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense.” – J.A. Langford
“First time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.” – Oliver Goldsmith
“No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men.” – J.A. Langford
“Habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. Will help when all else fails. It’s presence when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.” – Anthony Trollope
“A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.” – Robert Aris Willmott
“Sometimes a book fills you with evangelical zeal, and you become certain that the world won’t be fixed until all people read it.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” – Lady M. W. Montagu
“Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.” – Thomas Carlyle