It Would Be Worth The While To Select Our Reading, For Books Are
The Society We Keep; To Read Only The Serenely True; Never
Statistics, Nor Fiction, Nor News, Nor Reports, Nor Periodicals,
But Only Great Poems, And When They Failed, Read Them Again, Or
Perchance Write More.
Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer
up our perfect () thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or
psalms.
For we should be at the helm at least once a day. The
whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour,
if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont
to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it
necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless
study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the
Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read
them at all. "There are the worshippers with offerings, and the
worshippers with mortifications; and again the worshippers with
enthusiastic devotion; so there are those the wisdom of whose
reading is their worship, men of subdued passions and severe
manners; - This world is not for him who doth not worship; and
where, O Arjoon, is there another?" Certainly, we do not need to
be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts
to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if
he took a nap.
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