To read great books does not mean one becomes ‘bookish’; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.

The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking... Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

When I was starting my journey as a writer, I used to watch and read the interviews of famous authors. And one thing was common in all of them. They all said the best ideas come into their mind when they are not looking for them or not doing anything at all. It’s not just the authors but if you ask any creative or artistic person, you will get the same answer. And I always thought that it was impossible until it happened to me.

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas

The idea is that you could sacrifice something of value, and that would have transcendent utility. That is by no means an unsophisticated idea. In fact, it might be the greatest idea that human beings ever came up with.

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

The great ideas are always emerging, to be available to all men and women. And one hope of our lives is the communication of these truths.

Life transforming ideas have always come to me through books.