A Quote by Wallace Stevens

The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He wears the words he reads to look upon Within his being.

Wallace Stevens

Quote Topics

Been Being His Look Look Up Reader Reads Thinker Wears Within Words Written

Quote Author

Wallace Stevens
American - Poet
October 2, 1879 - August 2, 1955

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

Gerald Brenan

If someone considers the prophetic writings with all the diligence and reverence they are worth, while he reads and examines with great care, it is certain that in that very act he will be struck in his mind and senses by some more divine breath and will recognize that the books he reads have not been produced in a human way, but are words of God.

Origen

The bookful blockhead ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails.

Alexander Pope

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

Dr. Seuss

It has often been said there’s so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is. And that's why your books have such power and strength. You publish with shorth! (Shorth is better than length.)

Dr. Seuss

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Samuel Johnson

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later.

George Orwell

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle.

Vladimir Nabokov

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is only a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers to the reader to enable the latter to discover in himself what he would not have found but for the aid of the book.

Marcel Proust

Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

I'm not somebody that opens a playbook and just turns and reads and reads. That doesn't do it for me.

Tim Tebow

A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

Romain Rolland

The reader reads aloud, with a sing-song up … then down … then down again cadence. My mood shifts from merely reluctant to derisive. It’s a tired reading style. I’m sick of it. It attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves—as they’ve been arranged—could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name.