[[1]] "General ideas and great conceit are always in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune."—Goethe.
[[2]] "I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this) you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter."—Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies.
"Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read—it is full of suggestions."—Emerson.
Benjamin Franklin, writing to a lady who asked him to give her advice about reading said:
"I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious or that may be useful ... and as many of the terms of science are such as you cannot have met with in your common reading, and may therefore be unacquainted with, I think it would be well for you to have a good dictionary at hand to consult immediately when you meet a word you do not know the precise meaning of. This may at first seem troublesome and interrupting, but it is a trouble that will daily diminish, and you will daily find less and less occasion for your dictionary, as you will become more acquainted with the terms; and in the mean time you will read with more satisfaction because with more understanding."
[[3]] "A man who has no acquaintance with foreign languages, knows nothing of his own."