The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.

Harold Bloom
About This Quote

This is a quote from William Shakespeare. The playwright was inspired by the Latin phrase, "Nemo ante me otiosum est," which means "no one is useless." This quote can be interpreted in different ways, but usually it is seen as an advice to read the classics for inspiration.

Source: How To Read And Why

Some Similar Quotes
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell
  2. If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open,... - Italo Calvino
  3. We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. - B.F. Skinner
  4. Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. - Gustave Flaubert
  5. People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. - Logan Pearsall Smith
More Quotes By Harold Bloom
  1. (Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.
  2. Everyone wants a prodigy to fail it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
  3. (Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.
  4. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
  5. Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.
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