Reading

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I
had gained a read more

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I
had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused
before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we
cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books read more

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we
cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books of
science, though without any desire fixed of improvement, will
grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or
religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the
ideas which are often offered to the mind, will at last find a
lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.

If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what
books he read.
read more

If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what
books he read.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,

My early and invincible love of reading, . . . I would not
exchange for the treasures of India.

My early and invincible love of reading, . . . I would not
exchange for the treasures of India.

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated
readings deserves to be read at all.

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated
readings deserves to be read at all.

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever
it may be, as he saw read more

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever
it may be, as he saw it.

The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler sort,
Whose wit well read more

The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler sort,
Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,
Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.

But truths on which depends our main concern,
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn,
read more

But truths on which depends our main concern,
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn,
Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre he that runs may read.

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading,
imparts the vivacity and novelty of read more

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading,
imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech,
the sea which receives tributaries from every region read more

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech,
the sea which receives tributaries from every region under
heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles
river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.