A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

Quote Topics

Acquire Almost Almost All Construct Habit Life Reading Refuge Yourself

Quote Author

W. Somerset Maugham
British - Novelist
January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Albert Schweitzer

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

W. Somerset Maugham

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.

Charlotte Mason

Pace yourself in your reading. A little bit every day really adds up. If you read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do. It is far better to walk a mile a day than to run five miles every other month. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit.

Douglas Wilson

Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.

Caitlin Flanagan

Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the keystone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Your god may be your little Christian habit - the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, 'I can't do that right now; this is my time alone with God.' No, this is your time alone with your habit.

Oswald Chambers

You encountered a misery near the end of the day and it took a while to gauge its full extent. Some miseries had sharp curvature and could be negotiated readily. Others had almost no curvature and you knew you'd be spending hours turning the corner. Great whopping-big planet-sized miseries.

Jonathan Franzen

It is important early in life to acquire the power of reading sense wherever you happen to be.

C. S. Lewis

When you acquire enough inner peace and feel really positive about yourself, it's almost impossible for you to be controlled and manipulated by anybody else.

Wayne Dyer

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Susan Sontag

You can have a similar experience in your own life. You can change, even if you consider yourself a "night person"...Almost any habit-good or bad-can be set in about twenty-one days. With firm resolve, we can make the needed changes in our lives.

Joe J. Christensen

Successful men and women become successful because they acquire the habit of thinking in terms of success. Get the success habit in the small circumstances you control, and soon you'll be controlling the bigger ones.

Napoleon Hill

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.

Randall Jarrell

Be lamps unto yourselves. Be refuges unto yourselves. Take yourself no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead, Shall be a lamp unto themselves, Shall betake themselves as no external refuge, But holding fast to the truth as their lamp, Holding fast to the truth as their refuge, Shall not look for refuge to anyone else besides themselves, It is they who shall reach to the very topmost height; But they must be anxious to learn.