Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon, Of Studies
Most of what I buy is to be tasted. I keep forgetting the difference until the third chapter.
Reading
A shelf about the thing this whole book is made of. A few from it, in no order that matters.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon, Of Studies
This page is the writing half. It is the exact-making I am after, not the fullness.
The reading of many books is a distraction. Be careful lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, II
Written to a man with a smaller to-be-read pile than mine.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Thoreau, Walden
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.
Schopenhauer, On Reading and Books
He means it as a warning. I copy the sentence out by hand partly to make the thinking mine again.
'Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
Emerson, Society and Solitude
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
Descartes, Discourse on Method
The good ones answer differently on a second reading, which is more than most conversations manage.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson