Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson,

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.