When I want to read a novel, I write one.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

Some will read only old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book because they know the author: others . . . would also read the man.

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

Accent and emphasis are the pith of reading; punctuation is but secondary.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.