Envy […], like a cold poison, […] benumbs and stupefies. And thus conscious as it were of its own impotence, it folds its arms in despair, and sits c… - Jeremy Collier

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much over-charges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigour to the mind.

By reading a man does as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's nativity is much better than Plato's pre-existence, because here a man knows something of the state, and is the wiser for it, which he is not in the other.

This is brave Bear-Garden language!