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

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Books are absent teachers.

A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth.

... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him.

Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.

The reader who fails to ponder, or at least mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster.

Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.

Culture is what happens when the managers are not around.

Mexicans are quasi-legal.

We cannot say that you are spiritually advanced if you are unkind to those around you.

Soft men tend to be born from soft countries.

Make an offer they can't refuse.

God is not a thing to be achieved, but a thing to be.

I went off to fight some battle that I'd invented inside me.

We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.

Look into a mirror, make eye contact with yourself, and say "I love me" as many times as possible during the day.