Books are written sometimes about “The Great Ideas Of The Past”, sometimes about that great thinker of former times, and the public reads these books written by a someone else, but not the works of “The Great Man or Woman” himself/herself.
There is nothing that so greatly recreates the mind as the works of the old classic writers. Directly one has been taken up, even if it is only for half-an-hour, one feels as quickly refreshed, relieved, purified, elevated, and strengthened as if one had refreshed oneself at a mountain stream.
One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a person should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him/her to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is.
It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that we sometimes feel that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.
Books are written sometimes about “The Great Ideas Of The Past”, sometimes about that great thinker of former times, and the public reads these books written by a someone else, but not the works of “The Great Man or Woman” himself/herself.
There is nothing that so greatly recreates the mind as the works of the old classic writers. Directly one has been taken up, even if it is only for half-an-hour, one feels as quickly refreshed, relieved, purified, elevated, and strengthened as if one had refreshed oneself at a mountain stream.
One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a person should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him/her to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is.
It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that we sometimes feel that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.