Some good quotes
From the estimable C.S. Lewis:
There is no clearer distinction between the literary and the unliterary. It is infallible. The literary man rereads, other men simply read. A novel once read is to them like yesterday’s newspaper. One may have hopes of a man who has never read The Odyssey or Malory, or Boswell, or Pickwick. But none (as regards literature) of the man who tells you he has read them and thinks that settles the matter. It is as if a man said he had once washed or once slept or once kissed his wife or once gone for a walk. (“Different Tastes in Literature”)
Now Anthony Trollope:
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone…It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”
And finally, Thoreau:
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise. It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and unreservedly as they were written.”