So many readers seem delighted to find their own thoughts in an author; didn’t they hope for something better?
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
The good reader blames himself first for obscurity, and to punish this habit with nonsense is worse than bad writing: it is depraved conduct.
Intellectuals have to do a lot of hate-reading.
Many modern ills trace to the fateful decision to teach stupid people how to read.
It is more common to talk well than to listen well, and to write well than to read well.
It is a great honor for a book to be burned.
The Two Kinds of Useful Books
1. Technical, scientific, mathematical
2. Hurts your feelings
If you’re going to read only one book on a subject, don’t bother.
The first rung on the ladder of literacy is pedantry, or as we now say, fact-checking.
A lifetime of reading novels will teach you how to feel superior to a world in which you are no use.