Meaning of “Some books are to be tasted, others to…”

The Tatler No. 147; the comparison presents reading as a form of regular exercise for the mind.

On Liberty, Chapter 2; Mill argues for open discussion because opposing views expose weaknesses and sharpen understanding.

Of Studies; Bacon distinguishes the intellectual uses of reading, conversation, and writing within the essay’s compact account of study and judgment.

Analects 2:15 in James Legge’s translation; the saying balances study with independent reflection.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “READING,” printed page 49, Project Gutenberg #67466. Wollstonecraft calls reading the most rational employment when people seek food for the understanding, contrasting reflective reading with merely collecting words or quotations; this is eighteenth-century educational argument rather than a current evidence-based teaching prescription.

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.