Word: books
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...indiscriminate acquaintance which many feel forced to maintain among "recent publications" deprives reading of its pleasure, and makes it for them a task; and no wonder, for who can feel any pleasure in turning the leaves of a book in which he feels no interest? One should read only as inclination leads him, for the mere skimming over a book as a task will do him but little good; if he satisfy that curiosity which leads to the study of a limited number of books, it will be of more advantage to him as an aid in the acquisition...
...Germans, who stand high among nations in literary attainments, tell us that nothing is so prolific as a little known well. It is not necessary that one should confine himself to one book, or class of books, in order to do justice to the subject, for this would be to cramp the mind and fit it for only one channel; though it were better to be a man of one book and know that well, than to wander through the various authors, gleaning here a little and there a little, but neglecting the great value of a thorough study...
Instead, therefore, of being a cause of complaint that we read so few books, it ought rather to be a source of pleasure to think that we read so many; for the carefully compiled estimate, which announces that each student on the average draws fifteen books in a term year,-almost two each month,-is rather high than low, for, if the contents of each book are impressed on the mind so vividly that they immediately present themselves when wanted, this is surely the nucleus of an ever-increasing stock of valuable knowledge,-a requisite to all of any real...
...portraits by Copley in Massachusetts Hall have lately been photographed. It is understood that they are to be reproduced by the heliotype process to serve for illustrations in a book relating to art by Mr. C. C. Perkins soon to be published...
...sees this misapprehension in reading-men who rush through book after book - novels, sermons, poems, biographies, travels, plays, histories - only that they may feel, when they have finished, that they have read them and are therefore "well-read" men. How different from people in the last century, who perused their Clarissa Harlowe, Rape of the Lock, Pilgrim's Progress, and Shakespeare till they almost knew them by heart, and thoroughly understood and appreciated much that was in them! Would it not be better if we, in our day, could only bring ourselves to give up the one thousand...