“There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.”

“If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.”

“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.”

“It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all.”

“Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.”

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.”

“Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism”