“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 man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten.”
“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.”
“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.”