Quotes & Sayings About Active Reading

Max never intended to be messy with his writing, which he could read just fine, years later if necessary, even if his teachers couldn't. He merely found that his active mind tended to move too fast for his hand to keep up with. — Sol Luckman

[Thich Nhat Hanh] the one that revolutionized Buddhism. Instead of being monks just engaged in meditation, it was active Buddhism. You went out and felt the ills of the community around you. Instead of retreating to a monastery, you were out in the streets working. And he's been a great help to me, just reading his book, so I don't feel helpless about what I can do about all the violence around me. — Sandra Cisneros

The habit of reading is absolutely critical today, particularly for Christians. As television turns our society into an increasingly image dominated culture, Christians must continue to be people of the Word. When we read, we cultivate a sustained attention span, an active imagination, a capacity for logical analysis and critical thinking, and a rich inner life. Each of these qualities, which have proven themselves the essential to a free people is under assault in a TV dominated culture. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever. — Mortimer J. Adler

The new Constitution will promote the "general" welfare, not welfare varying by condition or by place of residence. It will secure our liberties - against whom? There's an ambiguity here; liberty could be secured against foreign enemies and domestic subversives, or against the new government itself. The latter interpretation is soothing to American ears; but in this context, it seems far-fetched. The clause appears in a list of things government is to do, not things it is not to do; a list of powers, not of prohibitions. The new government, it would appear, is not the enemy of liberty but its chief agent and protector. The purpose then, in its most plausible reading, is to create a strong, active, national government, one whose benefits will flow directly to the people who create it. — Garrett Epps

Parents can do three things to make reading active. (1) Elaborate and explain the text to the child. This extends and deepens the experience of the story. (2) Relate the story to the child's own experiences. An interest in reading and understanding the meaning of the text occur if there is 'further information' to personalize the text. (3) Ask questions to ensure the child understands the story, thinks about the characters and plot, and extends their imagination. — Colin Baker

Writing has always allowed me to escape. I was a very lonely child. Because I was very socially awkward, I would always have trouble making friends. And so reading and writing allowed me to have friends and to have an active imaginary life that really sort of kept me sane. — Roxane Gay

Unlike music, excessive reading has been shown to be dangerous for the female mind. It was taught in our earliest lectures: the male cells are essentially katabolic: active energetic; and female cells are anabolic: there to conserve energy and support life. While a little light reading is fine, breakdown follows when woman goes against her nature. — Anna Hope

When I'm not actually doing my work, I'm planning it or thinking about it or reading things that on some level are transformed into performance fantasies. I have no active interests. I never go anywhere or do anything that transports me outside the boundaries of my mind. — George Carlin

Watching a scene from a film in slow motion is possible, but there's an unreal air to it; reading a passage from a book slowly does nothing to rob the words of their power. A film presents images; a book creates images inside the reader, with the reader's active participation. Books are good for your brain. — Lewis Buzbee

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental. — Stephen Spender

Reading is a way of closing out the real world and losing yourself in a new one. This is also called "active meditation" - a state of mind that you attempt to reach to rid yourself of tension and make yourself feel better. — Henry Mckinnon

Hey, laugh all you want, but I grew up poor in backwoods Florida, with an immigrant, single mom. I'm the only person in my family who learned to read, and that was only because of comic books at first, and then fantasy novels and an active imagination. I got addicted to them when I was a kid and read like crazy. I must have read thousands of them. So I've been reading about elves and that kind of thing for twenty plus years. I can't help it if I'm excited." "You were a geek," she said. "Well, I guess." "I bet you played Dungeons and Dragons in a friend's garage." "Well, yeah." "Nerd. — Larry Correia

To keep an active mind, I find that reading novels is really good. — Alison Pill

I'm totally active. I am just this side of hyper. I jog and go to the gym every day. When I'm on the computer, I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm never quiet. My brain is very rarely not engaged. Every now and again I will fall asleep under the parasol in the sun, but that's a rarity. — Suzi Quatro

Increasingly, there will be accountability to the business side, especially in the world of ad viewability. This is the awkward term for a new insistence from marketers that they'll pay up only if at least 50% of an ad is in view for at least one continuous second. In that scenario, reading versus browsing is critical because it means ads on a post will be seen, pushing up click-throughs and ad rates. I suggested Super Journalists would get paid for hitting certain time-spent metrics. Well, for one post anyway, I hit a few super numbers tracked by Moat. After about 1,000 views, my average active dwell time (that is, time spent reading) was — Anonymous

I think that reading is always active. As a writer, you can only go so far; the reader meets you halfway, bringing his or her own experience to bear on everything you've written. What I mean is that it is not only the writer's memory that filters experience, but the reader's as well. — Ruth Reichl

So the obvious, then: the liberal arts in general, and especially reading seriously, offer an opening to a wider life, the powers of active citizenship (including the willingness to vote); reading strengthens perception, judgment, and character; it creates understanding of other people and oneself, maybe kindliness and wit, and certainly the ability to endure solitude, both in the common sense of empty-room loneliness and the cosmic sense of empty-universe loneliness. Reading fiction carries you further into imagination and invention than you would be capable of on your own, takes you into other people's lives, and often, by reflection, deeper into your own. I will indulge a resounding tautology: every great civilization, including ours, has had a great literature and great readers. If literature matters less to young people than it once did, we are all in trouble. — David Denby

Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. — Khaled Hosseini

Political indoctrination was geared towards producing activists. The propaganda image of the ideal child was a precocious political orator mouthing agitprop. Communism could not be taught from books, educational thinkers maintained. It had to be instilled through the whole life of the school, which was in turn to be connected to the broader world of politics through extra-curricular activities, such as celebrating Soviet holidays, joining public marches, reading newspapers and organizing school debates and trials. The idea was to initiate the children into the practices, cults and rituals of the Soviet system so that they would grow up to become loyal and active Communists. — Orlando Figes

Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author. — Mortimer J. Adler

Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active. — Richard M. Nixon

After the day's active life, we spend at least a few hours quietly to develop our aesthetic, theoretical, and spiritual understanding of the way of life. By either reading, writing, performing, or thinking and meditating, we should continuously refine our personality and deepen our understanding of art, literature, science, philosophy, religion, and various other arts. — Michio Kushi

Sex in the nineties is boring. The problem is that it has gone from an active act to a spectator sport. We watch people make love on television and in films. We call 900 numbers to hear what someone would do to us if they weren't sitting in a boiler room of other dirty talkers reading from a prepared script. — Erma Bombeck

Obedience is the thing, living in active response to the living God. The most important question we ask of this text is not, 'What does this mean?' but 'What can I obey?' A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances. — Eugene H. Peterson

If you are reading this, and feel discouraged by an inability to communicate to others your own feelings about the importance of an active space development effort, comfort yourself with this thought. If you want to be on the leading edge of anything, you have by definition to be a couple of standard deviations away from most people. That makes you an odd-ball. The trick is to learn to accept it, then to like it-and keep on making lots of noise for what you believe in. — Charles Sheffield

The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love - he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture or article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means - that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives; but duringthe contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim! — Randall Jarrell

Now the things done may not be evil or improper; they in fact may be good and godly (such as reading the Bible, praying, worshiping, preaching); but if they are not undertaken in a spirit of complete reliance upon the Holy Spirit, then the flesh is the source of all. The old creation is willing to do anything-even to submit to God - if only it is permitted to live and to be active. — Watchman Nee

Reading. I know it's not a very active activity, but it is in my head. — Rachel Miner

Every now and then, I need a little spark of inspiration. It could be from reading (a novel, poetry, story, news article, a blog) or it could be attending an event (play, musical performance, poetry reading, writers conference). Something to wake up the drowsy Artist that lives within. For the past seven months, I have done all of these things and I noticed that my Artist has been up writing articles, a children's story, and most recently, working on new poems. After several years of hibernation, it is good to see my Artist so active. I must continue to give her a jolt to inspire her to do much more. — Sandra Proto

A film presents images; a book creates them inside the reader, with the reader's active participation. Books are good for your brain. Neurologists have found that, when watching television or film, the viewer's eyes remain idle, straight ahead, but when reading, the actual physical movement of scanning the page from left to right (or right to left, or up and down, depending) stimulates and conditions the brain, a Stairmaster of the mind. — Lewis Buzbee

Students who excel in active listening also contribute much to the formation of community. This is also true of students who may not speak often but when they speak (sometimes only when reading required writing) the significance of what they have to say far exceeds those of other students who may always openly discuss ideas. And of course there are times when an active silence, one that includes pausing to think before one speaks, adds much to classroom dynamics. — Bell Hooks

A program of active reading and writing might be the hardest form of thinking, but it is also the most organized methodology of self-education. Reading exposes the mind to a world of ideas heretofore unimaginable and encourages the novice learner to write. Reading is a form a joint mediation and writing represents the product of several authors' collective and collaborative minds at work. — Kilroy J. Oldster

You sometimes feel that reading books is the only way you can think, as if the reading occupied one part of your brain and this allowed the other part to go free and become more active. You need that time to read in order to think. That's all there is to it. — Yannick Murphy

Reading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other. — Jonathan Lethem

Let us ponder over this basic truth until we are steeped in it, until it becomes as familiar to us as our awareness of shapes or our reading of words: God, at his most vitally active and most incarnate, is not remote from us, wholly apart from the sphere of the tangible; on the contrary, at every moment he awaits us in the activity, the work to be done, which every moment brings. He is, in a sense, at the point of my pen, my pick, my paint-brush, my needle - and my heart and my thought. It is by carrying to its natural completion the stroke, the line, the stitch I am working on that I shall lay hold on that ultimate end towards which my will at its deepest levels tends.1 — Michael Frost