To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the sense; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it.

And then beautiful things grow rich with the emotion that they have aroused in succeeding generations. That is why old things are more beautiful than modern. The Ode on a GrecianUrn is more lovely now than when it was written, because for a hundred years lovers have read it and the sick at heart taken comfort in its lines.

They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure