一本书会决定一个人的人生是美好还是糟糕，成功还是失败。生命早期读过的一些书，会对我们产生深远的影响。
我们从自己喜爱的书本中，形成了许多自己的观点。最喜欢的作者往往是影响我们最深的老师，我们通过他的眼睛看世界。如果我们习惯阅读一些振奋人心、文风纯正、逻?分明、敏感睿智的书，这些品质也会根植于我们的思想中。相反，如果我们阅读消极、不健康的书，则会沾染书中的缺陷和恶习。我们无法避免书本的影响，如同无法避免呼吸对我们的影响一样。
最好的书最能激励、鞭策我们持之以恒地去做事，成为与众不同的人。它们把我们提升到更高的境界，让我们呼吸更清新的空气。如同应该结交鼓舞我们从事崇高事业的人一样，我们也应该只读那些鼓舞人心、帮助我们创造更大价值和机会的书。
爱默生有三条读书准则：从不读出版不到一年的书，从不读不出名的书，从不读不喜欢的书。
藏书不再是一种奢华，而是一种必需。一个家没有书籍、杂志和报纸，就像一间屋子没有窗户。儿童会在群书中学会阅读，?常·阅会让他们不知不觉地吸取知识。任何一个家庭都不能没有好的读物。如果你无力承担，那么用书籍或者图?来装饰你的家，而不要用一些不必要的家具；宁愿穿破旧的衣服鞋袜，也不要吝啬书本；如果不能把孩子送去学院，你可以给他们一些好书，那会让他们摆脱环境的束缚，享有尊敬和荣耀。
玛丽·沃特利·蒙塔古说：“没有比读书更便宜的娱乐，也没有比读书之乐更持久的愉悦。”好书可以陶冶情操，净化心灵，抵制低级趣味的诱惑，使我们的生活品位和思想境界达到更高水平。读过一本卓越、激励人心的书，我们的思想就不会轻易低劣。为进步或愉悦而读书的人，谈吐会更加风趣，但这并不涉及所读之书。
不论你读什么书，如果你想提升精神境界，就要饱含激情、精力充沛、全心全意地去读。学会吸收书中的精神和生活道德，并融合到你自己的生活中。能将最多的知识消化并转化成品质的人，是最会读书的人。死读书的人只会背诵字词和一些皮毛，没有丝毫领悟。他们的大脑拥塞，精神却饥渴。如果你从某一本书中受益颇深，就会感受到一种前所未有的力量。
读书的乐趣
The Pleasure of Reading
佚名/Anonymous
All the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that have de lighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books but we must know how to avail ourselves of this treasure and how to get the most from it. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.
I am most interested in people, in them and finding out about them. Some of the most remarkable people I' ve met existed only in a writer' s imagination, then on the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I' ve found in books new friends, new societies, new words.
If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in who as in how. Who in the books includes everybody from science fiction superman two hundred centuries in the future all the way back to the first figures in history. How covers everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes to the discoveries of science and ways of teaching manner to children.
Reading is pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author' s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something, they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families. Wherever you start reading you connect yourself with one of the families of ideas, and in the long run, you not only find out about the world and the people in it; you find out about yourself, too.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you you "ough" to read, you probably won' t have fun. But if you put down a book you don' t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time — and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won' t have suffered during the process.
人类世世代代的聪明才智，以及几百年来愉悦人们的故事，都可以轻松实惠地从书中获得。不过，读者必须懂得利用知识，进而获得最大收益。世上最不幸的人就是那些从未体会过阅读佳作所带来的快乐的人。
我对人很感兴趣，对他们本身和发现他们同样兴趣十足。我认识的一些卓越的人物只能到作家的想象中寻找，然后又体现在作家的作品之中，最后变成我的想象。我从书中结识了新朋友，扩大了社会知识，也学到了新的语言。
如果说我是对人感兴趣，那么其他人则是关注方式方法而非人物。书中的人物可谓丰富多彩，不仅有科幻小说中描写的两万年后的超人，还可以追溯到人类历史的开端。记录的事情也是千奇百怪，从对福尔摩斯侦探故事的巧妙叙述到科学发现和管教孩子的方法。
读书是一种思维享受，有点儿像体育运动。善于读书的人需要强烈的求知欲、丰富的知识和敏捷的反应。读书之所以是一种乐趣，并不在于作者告诉你什么，而是因为读书使你积极思考。在作者的引导下，你的想象任意驰骋，甚至超越作者的想象。对比作者的?历，你会得出自己的结论，也许相同，也许相悖，而随着你对作者思想的理解，你也会变得越来越深刻。
每一部书都独自存在，犹如独户房子。而图书馆的书籍则像城市中的建筑。尽管它们各成一体，但共同构成一个整体。不仅它们之间相互关联，而且也与其他城市相互联系。相同或相近的看法会在不同的地方出现。文学作品中反映的就是人们生活中?常出现的事情，但在不同时期作者的处理大相径庭。书籍之间也相互影响，它们传承过去，体现现在，预测将来，相互联系，代代相传，形同各个家族。不管你从何时读起，都会有一种观点与你相符。长远来看，你不仅从书中了解世界，体验别人的生活，也会认识你自己。
只有你诚心读书，阅读才会成为一种乐趣。假如你读的是别人认为“该”读的书，你很可能觉得索然无味。假如你放下自己不喜欢的书，另试一本，直到发现自己觉得有意义的书，然后轻松地读下去，你肯定会感到心情畅快。假如你因阅读而变得更加高尚、聪明、善良和文雅，读书就不再是一种负担了。
读书是一种思维享受，头脑的瑜伽！我们不仅从书中了解世界和别人的生活，而且了解了自己。
读书乐
The Delights of Books
[英国]约翰·卢伯克/John Lubbock
Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature; help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves.
When we read we may not only be kings and live in palaces, but, what is far better, we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, expense. Precious and priceless are the blessing, which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most sublime and enchanting regions.