If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.... Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
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Letter to Isham Reavis (5 November 1855).Abraham Lincoln
» Abraham Lincoln - all quotes »
Flaubert read too many books, and in consequence some of his own books stagger under the weight of his erudition. He said he'd read some preposterous number of books to prepare for the writing of Salammbô, and you can feel them dragging the novel down. It would have been much better if he'd made it all up.
John Banville
About Swami Vivekanada: I am not saying that the message of the Swami was the final word in our nationalism… But it was tremendous – something with an undying glory of its own. If you read his books, if you read his lectures, you are struck at once with his love of humanity, his patriotism, not abstract patriotism which came to us from Europe but of different nature altogether a more living thing, something which we feel within ourselves when we read his writings.
Chittaranjan Das
Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Have you read anything beautiful lately? Do make sure somehow to get hold of and read the books by Eliot, you won’t be sorry, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Felix Holt, Romola (Savonarola’s story), Scenes of clerical life. You know we gave the 3 underlined ones to Pa on his birthday last year. When I get the time for reading, I’ll read them again.
George Eliot
I can read books and news articles about people who have excelled, people who have done extremely well in their chosen field, or made a lot of money, or married well, or what have you. When some people read this stuff, they get inspired, but when I read it, it makes me feel worse. Sometimes I wish I had never learned to read.
John S. Hall
Lincoln, Abraham
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow
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