Quotations and Literature Forum

Serious one, this ....

I've bought a bunch of books as a wedding present for my nephew - can anyone come up with something apt to encourage the young feller to actually read the bloody things?

Reading maketh a full man.
--Francis Bacon

The complete quotation is:

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

_________________
Mr. Fussbudget

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch: On the Art of Reading:
If the Kingdom of God, or anything correspondent to it, be within us, even in such specks of dust as we separately are, why that, and that only, can be the light by which you or I may hope to read the Universal: that and that only, deserves the name of 'What Is.' Nay, I can convince you in a moment. Let me recall a passage of Emerson quoted by me on the morning I first had the honour to address an audience in Cambridge:
It is remarkable (says he) that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures...anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.
It is remarkable, as Emerson says; and yet, as we now see, quite simple. A learned man may patronise a less learned one: but the Kingdom of God cannot patronise the Kingdom of God, the larger the smaller. There are large and small. Between these two mysteries of a harmonious universe and the inward soul are granted to live among us certain men whose minds and souls throw out filaments more delicate than ours, vibrating to far messages which they bring home, to report them to us; and these men we call prophets, poets, masters, great artists, and when they write it, we call their report literature. But it is by the spark in us that we read it: and not all the fire of God that was in Shakespeare can dare to patronise the little spark in me. If it did, I can see - with Blake - the angelic host
throw down their spears
And water heaven with their tears.
To nurse that spark, common to the king, the sage, the poorest child - to fan, to draw up to a flame, to 'educate' What Is - to recognise that it is divine, yet frail, tender, sometimes easily tired, easily quenched under piles of book-learning - to let it run at play very often, even more often to let it rest in what Wordsworth calls
a wise passiveness
passive - to use a simile of Coventry Patmore - as a photographic plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, simply by waiting with its face turned upward - to mother it, in short, as wise mothers do their children - this is what I mean by the Art of Reading.
~ Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944). On the Art of Reading. 1920. Apprehension versus Comprehension, Wednesday, November 15, 1916
http://aol.bartleby.com/191/2.html

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...What really nocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
~found attributed to J. D. Salinger at
http://www.bustersbookshelf.com/media_coverage.htm

The end of a good performance makes me lonely and I let go slowly just as I linger over the end of a good book. It's always like losing friends.
~Lee Uttmark, "For All the Girls"
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/1 ... ndex1.html

"When you finish reading the book," says David, "it feels like you just had an experience with the author."
~Editor David Dwyer referring to Lynda Weinman's Designing Web Graphics

other statements along the same line found on the Internet:
"a good book is like a friend, never be with out one"
"Reading a good book can be like finding a new friend."
I feel kind of like I do at the end of a good book -- almost sad that the experience is over.

"For me a good book has twists and turns and makes you keep turning pages and wanting it to be the neverending story. As I near the end of a good book, I hope that after each page is another three chapters would be waiting to be read. Breathing Underwater had twists and turns and I felt that I knew the characters. As I turned each page I did hope there were more chapters. That's why I liked Breathing Underwater."
~Rebekah Kaplan, student, Newark High School.
http://www.udel.edu/erc/bow101501.html

"I'm slowly getting over the sadness that comes with getting to the end of a good book."
"I’m always a little sad when I reach the end of a good book or the last episode of a favorite television show. The characters become real people, and I’m sorry to see them leave my life."
"...I felt the same panic that comes from fingering the dwindling numbers of pages at the end of a good book."

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."
~Paul Sweeney
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/q104325.html
http://www.state.me.us/education/iasa/t ... quotes.htm

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
~ Benjamin Franklin
http://www.linearconcepts.com/etc/quotes.asp?q=i
http://www.yrbe.edu.on.ca/~rlgps/gwqh4.html

"It has been said reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body," Rowland said. "If we can exercise our mind by reading ... we will be empowering ourselves."
~Gov. John G. Rowland
www.newstimes.com/archive97/may2197/lca.htm
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
~Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Irish-born English essayist, playwright and politician.
The Tatler, London (March 18, 1710), no.147.
Encarta Book of Quotations edited by Bill Swainson, Bloomsbury, 2000.
http://www.evc.edu/language_arts/reading/
http://www.iss.stthomas.edu/studyguides/reading.htm
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/redla ... ngall.html
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body"
~Joseph Addison, English author, pre-eminent as an essayist, humorist, and moralist: 1672-1719, buried in Westminster Abbey.
http://www.hio.ft.hanze.nl/thar/reading.htm
http://www.framingham.k12.ma.us/FHSlists.htm
http://www.wvmccd.cc.ca.us/mc/depts/read/Readingv4.html
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch."
~Augustus Hare (1792-1834)
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/allegrow/readq.htm

And last but not least, one of my own from a poem called "The No-Talent Poet"
I believe the writer is a giver of imagination and thought,
The reader receives it, but does not take it as a loan.
Their reward can be greater than anything that can be bought,
For they can use it, build on it, and in the end, make it their own.
~Jon Houge

The person who doesn't read is no better off than the person who can't read.~Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p. 296

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.~ Bertrand Russell

Read, read, read.~ William Faulkner

Divine peity has rescued me from almost all the ardors of human desires. Well, if not entirely at least in great part.
This is heaven’s doing, though my character, or the passage of time has contributed.
I have seen many things, and have meditated much. And at last have begun to understand the worth of those activities which agitate the human race. That you may not think that I am immune to all man’s failings – learn that an unquenchable desire which I have never been able to suppress, nor have I desired to suppress it, for I flatter myself that the desire for worthy things can never be unworthy.
Would you know my complaint? Perhaps you expect the name of some disease? Yes, it is that I cannot satisfy my hunger for books.
Perhaps now I have more books than I need. But, it is with books as with other things, the more one gets the more one wants.
Yet, there is something special about books – gold, silver, gems, purple robes, a marble palace, broad lands, paintings, a horse with rich trappings, and all such things bring only a mute superficial pleasure. But books thrill you to the marrow!
They talk to you, counsel you, admit you to their living, speaking friendship. Nor do they insinuate themselves alone into the readers spirit. They introduce other books. Each one creates a desire for another.~Petrarch (1346)

Thank you guys - books are now in the mail, so need for any more!