Are you looking for the Holy Grail, the source of power and strength, money and sex, health and eternal life? Have you been looking long? You’ve looked everything and it’s nowhere? Go to a bookstore. Read non-fiction books on philosophy, psychology and anatomy. At your 169th book, you will find the map of a treasure island with a gift hidden in it. To get this gift, you will have to give everything you have but, in return, you will receive everything you dreamed of.
The meaning of the parables is to teach us to pay attention to very small and seemingly insignificant details, which, in fact, are truly the most important.
What does it mean to gain time? Montaigne spent 20 years writing his Essays and I read them in one month. I realized and put to good use some 20% of what I had read. Thus, my gain was about 4 years. The more you read, the more you gain time. Time is money. In three years of reading, I managed to gain some 100 years net and, taking the synergistic effect into consideration, some 1,000 years.
Books make us kinder as the stronger a person is the fewer fears this person has and it makes this person kinder. Books help to become stronger in mind.
I believe in fairy tales if I see their meaning and usefulness. If a fairy tale is a fantasy written for pleasure or other thrills, I am not interested in such tales.
A mind that doesn't read books degrades back into an animal. The human mind was created by books. That would not degrade, you need to grow. To stop is to die.
Isaac Babel’s short story Di Grasso clearly illustrates the Zen concept according to which, if a room is dark, all you should do to remedy the situation is to turn the light on. Do what you are most afraid of, and this will instantly transform hell into paradise.
Having read the same book, two different people will get totally different thoughts and messages from it. What's more, their impressions will rather depend on their life experience, outlook and mindset than on the book itself.
The message of the book often depends on the personality of its reader. As one likes to see the kind of message one is aimed at seeing.
Reading is not about how much one can read but rather about attention and understanding.
P.S. As usual, it's quality and not quantity that matters. Thus, a person who understood only one good book will make greater progress than someone who read a hundred of books for no reason. And if most of this someone's hundred books are shoddy, this person will not be considered a constructive type at all.
The rich and the beautiful cry too. The story of Cinderella. The story about a lucky fool who suddenly became rich. A consolation story, a booky cookie, a dream story - that mistakes the wish for the reality. A fairy tale about a dream that will never come true. A fairy tale about great love that doesn't exist in reality. A fairy tale about those who are more stupid or unlucky.
The books where children should act as adults will always be popular. As children like to feel adult while adults actually remain children within the bodies that grow old.
One of the best ways to raise children is not to argue or teach them, but, having gained their trust, becoming their friends, to slip them specially selected books, essays and articles, forcing their minds to grow and develop evolutionarily.
The tale of the three little pigs is a tale of those who live in a world of illusions and those who live in reality. Now you know what happens to people who want everything at once.
The goddess of victory Pallas Athena is the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. Athena, the warrior maiden, was the goddess of arts and crafts, science and invention, military tactics and strategy. In other words, if you seek the patronage of victory, you should learn more, read more, and train more.
This work is about how to act, even if you can do so. Onegin is a character who seems to do nothing wrong, staying within the bounds of public opinion, but everything he does is wrong.
Pull oneself from the mire by hairs... along with a horse/ Incredible! But philosophers claim that one can make one's own entertainment. Thousands of books assure it's up to us.