The Value of Reading

You do not need to read a book for the book's sake, but for your own.

You may read because in your high-pressure life, studded with problems and emergencies.

you need periods of relief and yet recognize that peace of mind does not mean numbness of mind.

You may read because you never had an opportunity to go to college, and books give you a chance to get something you missed.

You may read because your job is routine, and books give you a feeling of depth in life.

You may read because you did go to college.

You may read because you see social, economical and philosophical problems which need solution.

and you believe that the best thinking of all past ages may be useful in your age, too.

You may read because you are tired of the shallowness of contemporary life.

bored by the current conversational commonplaces, and wearied of shop talk and gossip about people.

Whatever your dominant personal reason, you will find that reading gives knowledge, creative power, satisfaction and relaxation.

It cultivates your mind by calling its faculties into exercise.

Books are a source of pleasure- the purest and the most lasting.

They enhance your sensation of the interestingness of life.

Reading them is not a violent pleasure like the gross enjoyment of an uncultivated mind, but a subtle delight.

Reading dispels prejudices which hem our minds within narrow spaces.

One of the things that will surprise you as you read good books from all over the world and from all times of man is that human nature is much the same today as it has been ever since writing began to tell us about it.

Some people act as if it were demeaning to them to wish to be wee-read, but you can no more be a healthy person mentally without reading substantial books than you can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food.