It is better to know a little of what is truly good and necessary than a lot of what is mediocre and unnecessary.
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. We owe to books those general benefits which come from high intellectual action. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power.
— Emerson
We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.
— Locke
Take care not to let the reading of many writers and different kinds of books cause confusion and uncertainty in your mind. If you want to glean something useful, you should nourish your mind only with writers of doubtless worth. Too many books distract the mind. This is why you should read only those books that are recognized as indisputably good. If you sometimes feel like going over for a while to other kinds of works, never forget to return again to the former.
— Seneca
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
— Thoreau
You should only read when the source of your own ideas dries up, which happens not infrequently even to the most intelligent person. But to frighten away your own nascent thought for the sake of a book—that is to commit a crime against the spirit.
— Schopenhauer
Literature repeats life. Wherever one turns, one is confronted with the incorrigible rabble of humankind—its name is legion—teeming everywhere and defiling everything, like summer flies. This is where such a propagation of bad books comes from, such an extraordinary harvest of literary weed that stifles good seed. These books steal people’s time, money and attention, which should really only be spent on a portion of selected works.
Bad books are not only useless, they are positively harmful. After all, nine tenths of today’s literature is only printed in order to extract from the pocket of the gullible public a couple of extra thalers; this is why authors, publishers and printers intentionally make their books thicker.
An even more harmful, impudent and shameless fraud is perpetrated by the hacks who get paid by the line: taking a penny for a line of their drivel, these dayworkers pervert the reader’s taste and destroy true enlightenment.
To counteract this harm one should break the habit of reading, or rather, one should not be reading the books that are making noise and occupying the public’s attention. Simply put, what one needs to do is avoid all those publications whose first year of existence is also going to be their last.
It is impossible not to add that the one who writes for fools is always sure to find a vast readership; and meanwhile, humankind ought rather to use its short and limited existence to get to know first class authors of all times and nations, highly gifted creators who tower above the multitude of bad writers. Only these kinds of writers can instruct and teach.
One cannot read too few bad books, and one will never be able to read too many good ones. Bad books are a moral poison that dulls the mind.
As a consequence of the fact that the mob insists on reading not the best books of all times, but only the newest creations of contemporary literature, present day hacks revolve in a tight circle of the same stale ideas and keep saying the same things, making it impossible for our century to crawl out of its own filth.
— Schopenhauer
The difference between material and mental poisons lies in the fact that most material poisons are disgusting to taste, whereas mental poisons, in the form of newspapers and bad books, are, unfortunately, oftentimes attractive.
