Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Once he'd asked, "Don't you want to read? There are hundreds of books in the sitting room."

She had laughed and said, "I've read them all. I want to remember them the way they were. If I read them now, the endings will have changed.

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.