"There is no business, no avocation whatever," says Wyttenbach, "which will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time, every day, to the studies of his youth."
"All the sport in the park," said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow of that pleasure I find in Plato."
"In the lap of Eternity," said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness."
"Death itself divides not the wise," says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phædo. May Homer live with all men forever!"
"When a man reads," says President Porter, "he should put himself into the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes, in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book."
"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed."
"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said Bulwer. "I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about."
"When I served when a young man in India," said a distinguished English soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing, hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me."
"Books," says E. P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time."
"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information."