Pray leave the text whole: it
has no meaning piecemeal; at any rate, not that best, wholesome
meaning, as of a frank and genial friend who talks, not for
himself or for his phrase, but for you. It is questionable morals
to dismember a living frame to seek for its obscure fountains of
life!
When you say that a book was meant to be read, you mean, for one
thing, of course, that it was not meant to be studied. You do not
study a good story, or a haunting poem, or a battle song, or a
love ballad, or any moving narrative, whether it be out of
history or out of fiction--nor any argument, even, that moves
vital in the field of action. You do not have to study these
things; they reveal themselves, you do not stay to see how. They
remain with you, and will not be forgotten or laid by. They cling
like a personal experience, and become the mind's intimates. You
devour a book meant to be read, not because you would fill
yourself or have an anxious care to be nourished, but because it
contains such stuff as it makes the mind hungry to look upon.
Neither do you read it to kill time, but to lengthen time,
rather, adding to its natural usury by living the more abundantly
while it lasts, joining another's life and thought to your own.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25