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“Choose what interests you.”
Bennett recommends beginning intellectual cultivation with a subject capable of sustaining real attention instead of selecting study solely for appearance or prestige.
Source note: Mental Efficiency, discussion of reading and self-development. The short imperative belongs to Bennett’s practical advice about choosing a field for sustained personal study.
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“I cannot live without books.”
Jefferson’s blunt statement makes books a necessity rather than a decoration, reflecting how central reading remained even after he sold his library to Congress.
Source note: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 10, 1815; the Library of Congress preserves and exhibits the wording.
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“To a poet nothing can be useless.”
Voice: Fictional character · Imlac
Creative attention turns a wide range of experience into material; knowledge that seems unrelated can later supply images, comparisons or instruction.
Source note: Rasselas, Chapter X; spoken by Imlac in his account of learning the poet’s craft through broad observation.
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“From a child I was fond of reading.”
Franklin identifies reading as an early habit that shaped his self-education, curiosity, writing, and later public life.
Source note: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; Franklin recalls spending his small amounts of money on books as a child.
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“In a word, literature is my Utopia.”
Books give Keller a realm of freedom and belonging in which physical barriers matter less than imagination, language, and thought.
Source note: The Story of My Life; Keller summarizes the central place of literature in her intellectual life.
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“Books are for nothing but to inspire.”
Emerson rejects passive reverence for books: their best use is to awaken the reader’s own active thought rather than replace it.
Source note: The American Scholar; Emerson asks what the right use of books is and answers that they should inspire.