ustom the mind to keep the best company by introducing it
only to the best books.--SYDNEY SMITH.

If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under
every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and
cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills,
however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would
be a taste for reading.--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an
exact man.... Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics,
subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric,
able to contend.--BACON.

Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers
of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of
extensive and various reading without reflection.--DUGALD STEWART.

Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and
used to advise young people never to be without a book in their
pocket, to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. "It
has been by that means," said he to a boy at our house one day, "that
all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by
running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue
ready to talk."--MRS. PIOZZI.

Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from
one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge,
than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower
gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly.--LYTTON.

Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.--COLLECT.

Much reading is like much eating,--wholly useless without digestion.
--SOUTH.

REASON.--Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief
eminences whereby we are raised above the beasts, in this lower
world.--DR. WATTS.

Let our reason, and not our senses, be the rule of our conduct; for
reason will teach us to think wisely, to speak prudently, and to
behave worthily.--CONFUCIUS.

Though reason is not to be relied upon as universally sufficient to
direct us what to do, yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed
where it tells us what we are not to do.--SOUTH.

He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool,
and he that dares not reason is a slave.--SIR W. DRUMMOND.

Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by
experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and be