To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. . Henry David Thoreau
Some Similar Quotes
  1. No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves it is the woman only who can make it a torment. - Jane Austen

  2. Language is the key to the heart of people. - Ahmed Deedat

  3. After all, tomorrow is another day! - Margaret Mitchell

  4. That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! - Connie Willis

  5. Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly. - Matthew Quick

More Quotes By Henry David Thoreau
  1. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed...

  2. I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..

  3. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

  4. It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

  5. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

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