“Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare”

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”

“Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.”

“Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. ”

“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.”