On Reading

We do not demand of an author that he should work to make us better; that would be laying too heavy a burden upon him. All that we can demand of him is that he work conscientiously, and that he have it in him to teach us something.

The simplest experience of the world proves that a work of great excellence may deeply move one person, while it leaves another untouched; and that a book which has influenced one strongly in one's youth may lose such influence over one's later years. There is practically nothing that every man can read at every time.