Leonardo da Vinci on reading

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Anyone who invokes authors in discussion is not using his intelligence but his memory.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Mark Twain1835–1910Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in “Disappearance of Literature”, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain’s Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Mark Twain1835–1910

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Writing