Reading Holy Books Quotes & Sayings

Don't consider me too demanding if I ask you once again to set great store by holy books and read them as much as you can. This spiritual reading is as necessary to you as the air you
breathe. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

The people are supposed to read books in these times of the School Board and, therefore, they do not need living speech. We are glad that the people should read, but much of what they read which is best worth reading was first heard from the pulpit! We know of no rivalry between the printed word and the preached Word - it is often the same thing. But I reckon that the most of you who have been converted to God will say that it was not what you read, but what you heard which was used of the Holy Spirit for your conversion! When heart speaks to heart with accents of emotion, it is somehow different from the paper. Some Brothers read their sermons and I do not condemn them, but I know that most of the people feel a kind of chill creeping over them as they hear the leaves rustle. It may be a prejudice, but I know that nine out of 10 are numbed by the foolscap for the reading. — Anonymous

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. — Arthur Schopenhauer

How a sip of water from a brass cup or a few drops from a brass spoon of the size of finger or how can one keep rose petals and marigold spreads between the pages of one's books for years or how the fresh shoot of barley could be put behind one's ears or how a dot of vermilion on the forehead or how fasting for a day or how praying or chanting or lightening an incense stick or how lighting a cotton wick dipped in mustard oil or how being blessed by priests and saints or how sitting in a lotus posture or how reading the holy books could kindle in one that thing called faith — Aporva Kala

Books are not holy relics,' Trefusis had said. 'Words may be my religion, but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that book s should be "treated with respect". But when are we told that _words_ should be treated with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as "objects" ... — Stephen Fry

Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious. — Ramakrishna

But what is a book? And what will change if we read onscreen rather than by turning the pages of a physical object? What will we gain, and more importantly, what will we lose? Old-fashioned habits, perhaps. A certain sense of the sacred that has surrounded the book in a civilisation that has made it our holy of holies. A peculiar intimacy between the author and reader, which the context of hypertextuality is bound to damage. A sense of existing in a self-contained world that the book and, along with it, certain ways of reading used to represent. — Jean-Philippe De Tonnac

Fundamentally, literacy is a spiritual discipline that must overcome the spiritual darkness that veils us. If we ever hope to spiritually benefit from our reading, the Holy Spirit must intrude upon our lives and remove our blindfolds so that we can behold the radiant glory of Jesus Christ (John 1:9). Once we see His glory, our literacy - how we read books - is permanently and forever changed. — Tony Reinke

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain. — Blaise Pascal

If you're following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God's will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels. In summary, po-tay-to, poh-tah-to. Religions are very flexible. — Scott Adams

Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced
there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. — Sinclair Lewis

Make careful choice of the books which you read:
let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence.
Let Scripture be first and most in your hearts and
hands and other books be used as subservient to it.
While reading ask yourself:
1. Could I spend this time no better?
2. Are there better books that would edify me more?
3. Are the lovers of such a book as this the greatest
lovers of the Book of God and of a holy life?
4. Does this book increase my love to the Word of God,
kill my sin, and prepare me for the life to come?
"The words of the wise are like goads, their collected
sayings like firmly embedded nails - given by one Shepherd.
Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of
making many books there is no end, and much study
wearies the body." Ecclesiastes 12:11-12 — Richard Baxter

I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point. — Tom Peters

The Bible is a book that every Christian should read, listen to, or have read to him or her throughout his or her lifetime; however, in the event that God has gifted a person with the characteristic for the utter joy that envelopes some during times of, what they would describe as, "pleasure reading" (an often times rare characteristic), it is only acceptable that he or she (particularly) reads His Holy Word at least once during his or her lifetime. At least, that's what I think. — Becky Watson

you may always find good books to read but the best and the ultimate book to read is the Holy Bible — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading - such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture - is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber. — Jaroslav Pelikan

Do not suppose, however, that those first principles [faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost] are the only ones to be learned; do not become stereotyped in your feelings, and think that you must always dwell upon them and proceed no further. If there be knowledge concerning the future; if there be knowledge concerning the present; if there be knowledge concerning ages that are past, any species of knowledge that would be beneficial to the mind of man, let us seek for it, and that which we cannot obtain by using the light which God has placed within us, by using our reasoning powers, by reading books, or by human wisdom alone, let us seek to a higher source - to that Being who is filled with knowledge. — Orson Pratt

The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder ... What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection. — Pio Of Pietrelcina