Twelve
People who don’t want to live, people who would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature.
Thirteen
No one is so sure of achieving the aims of the literary craftsman as the man who has something to say and wishes to say it simply and have done with it.
Fourteen
The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting that its activity take that direction; also by never leaving it idle, undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets after dark.
Fifteen
The enterprise of forming one’s literary taste is an agreeable one; if it is not agreeable it cannot succeed.
Sixteen
The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust—I had almost said, of fear.