“...The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary.”

“There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.”

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

“We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with the great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their genius becomes ours. . ." in The Great Conversation”

“The failure in reading -the omnipresent verbalism- of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them.”

“Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. A better formula is this: Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.”

“Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.”