“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.”

“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”

“Why did colleges make their students take examinations, and why did they give grade? What did a grade really mean? When a student "studied" did he do anything more than read and think-- or was there something special which no one in Walden Two would know about? Why did the professors lecture to the students? Were the students never expected to do anything except answer questions? Was it true that students were made to read books they were not interested in?”

“I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?""That is so.""Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."Poirot shrugged his shoulders."Eh bien, I have got on very well without them.""Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy--what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?”

“1 )Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.2)A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.”

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.”