10 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Reading

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on reading

14. Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

17. Never read any book that is not a year old.

43. I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

65. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

74. These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in broad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history aright, who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day.

248. 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.

272. In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

277. The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

286. A man is made by the books he reads.

291. I no more remember the books I have read than the meals I have eaten, but they have made me.