I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading, I cannot sit and think. Books think for me

I love to lose myself in other men's minds

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading.

I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.

All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page...

Men who think much want to speak often,

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else's thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal — that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work...

All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity.

reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with ones own

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.