Resolve
to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence.
If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end
of the year.—Horace Mann.
We never read without profit if with the
pen or pencil in our hand
we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we
already possess.—Zimmermann.
When what you read elevates your mind
and fills you with noble
aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is
good, and is the work of a master-hand.—La
Bruyère.
When in reading we meet with any maxim
that may be of use, we should
take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we
would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.—Colton.
We should accustom the mind to keep the
best company by introducing
it only to the best books.—Sydney Smith.
If I were to pray for a taste which
should stand me in stead under
every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and
cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however
things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste
for reading.—Sir John Herschel.
Reading maketh a full man, conference a
ready man, and writing an
exact man.... Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics,
subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric,
able to contend.—Bacon.
Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency
to weaken not only the powers
of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of
extensive and various reading without reflection.—Dugald
Stewart.
Mr. Johnson had never, by his own
account, been a close student, and
used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket,
to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. "It has been
by that means," said he to a boy at our house one day, "that all my
knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running
about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to
talk."—Mrs. Piozzi.
Reading without purpose is sauntering,
not exercise. More is got
from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in
knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A
cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the
butterfly.—Lytton.
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.—Collect.
Much reading is like much eating,—wholly
useless without digestion.—South.
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