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Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the
one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the
other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive,
cherished, and confirmed.
Author: Joseph Addison
Source: in the "Tatler", no. 147
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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an
exact man.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: Essays--Of Studies
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And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it
plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
Author: Bible
Source: Habakkuk (ch. II, v. 2)
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That he that readeth may run over it.
[Lat., Ut percurrat qui legerit eum.]
Author: Bible
Source: (rendering in the Vulgate), Habakkuk (ch. II, v. 2)
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Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
Author: Book of Common Prayer
Source: Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent
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In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature,
the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton,
Author: Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
Source: Caxtoniana--Hints on Mental Culture
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If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated
readings deserves to be read at all.
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Source: Essays--Goethe's Helena
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We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever
it may be, as he saw it.
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Source: Essays--Goethe's Helena
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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.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Retirement (l. 715)
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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.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Tirocinium (l. 77)
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The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading,
imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. XXII)
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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.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Essays--Books
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Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for
literature.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotation and Originality
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If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what
books he read.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotations and Originality
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My early and invincible love of reading, . . . I would not
exchange for the treasures of India.
Author: Edward Gibbon
Source: Memoirs
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The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these
lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless
implied, will be able to form some conception.
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Autobiography (bk. XVIII, Truth and Beauty)
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What they're accustomed to is no great matter,
But then, alas! they've read an awful deal.
[Ger., Zwar sind sie an das Beste nicht gewohnt,
Allein sie haben schrecklich viel gelesen.]
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Faust--Vorspiel auf dem Theater (l. 13), (Bayard Taylor's translation)
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In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and
receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: The Citizen of the World (letter LXXV)
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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.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: The Citizen of the World (letter LXXXIII)
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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.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: The Adventurer (no. 137)
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A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he
reads as a task will do him little good.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: Boswell's Life of Johnson
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is
transcribed.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: The Idler (no. 74)
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It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited
six thousand years for an observer.
Author: Johannes Kepler
Source: in "Martyrs of Science", p. 197
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I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
When I am not walking, I am reading;
I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.
- Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia),
Author: Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia)
Source: Last Essays of Elia--Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading
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Night after night,
He sat and bleared his eyes with books.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: Christus--The Golden Legend (pt. I)
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