On Books & Reading

Reading books in one’s youth is like looking at the moon through a crevice. Reading books in middle age is like looking at the moon in one’s courtyard and reading books in old age is like looking the moon on an open terrace. This is because the depth of benefits of reading varies in proportion to the depth of one’s own experience.

Reading is the greatest of all joys but there is more anger than joy in reading history.  But, after all, there is pleasure in such anger.  One should read classics in winter then one’s mind is more concentrated, read history in summer, because one has more time, read the ancient philosophers in autumn because they have such charming ideas and read the collected works of later authors in spring because then nature is coming book to life.

When literary men talk about military affairs it is mostly military science in the studio, literally discussing soldiers on papers and when military generals discuss literature, it is mostly rumors packed up on hearsay.

An ancient winter said that he would like to have ten years devoted to reading, ten years devoted to travel and ten years devoted to preservation and arrangement of what he had got.

Poetry becomes good only after one becomes poor or unsuccessful man usually has a lot of things to say and it is thus easy to show himself to advantage.  How can the poetry of rich and successful people be good when they neither sigh over their poverty nor complain about their being unprompted and when all they write about are the wind, the clouds, the moon and the dew?  Poetry acquires depth through sorrow.