“You can never be wise unless you love reading.”

“Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.”

“Never trust a man who writes more than he reads.”

“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

“People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!”

“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”

“It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.”