Henry David Thoreau on reading

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

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