Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part. He said, “What happened then, daddy?” I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out. I'm too tired to read. I'll read to you tomorrow.” So, he had a need to want to learn how to read. Don't teach children how to read. Don't teach them mathematics. Give them a reason to want it. In school, they're working ass-backwards.
Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author. He's picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn't have a favorite place to feed his mind!
God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.
The end of reading is not more books but more life.
Books worth reading are worth re-reading.
All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.
Learn to read slow; all other graces will follow in their proper places.
Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
Writing a long essay is probably the most complex constructive act that most human beings areever expected to perform.
Reading is seeing by proxy.
There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.
Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
Real luxury is time and opportunity to read for pleasure
Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.
Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.
A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.
Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
Given the books of a man, it is not difficult, I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born.
A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life.
when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says Private - grownups keep out: a children sprawled on the bed, reading.
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