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    “Human beings have been doing the same things for eons. And the wisest minds who ever lived wrote down the best of what they figured out. If you want to stay informed, if you want to learn how to prepare for an uncertain future—forget about breaking news articles, forget about refreshing your twitter feed, forget about the arguing talking heads on CNN. Instead, drink deeply from the great texts of history. Learn from the distant past, from the wisest minds who ever lived. Search very old books to find your best new ideas.”

    Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog

      “A library is a good place to soften solitude. A place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you’re all alone. The library is a whispering post. You don’t need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.”

      Susan Orlean

        “It’s impossible to teach your child everything they need to know to thrive in an unpredictable world. But when you focus on reading, you can rest assured that you’re building the skill that supports all others. It truly facilitates learning in every other area of life—academically and personally, as workers and as citizens—and is the undisputed best tool to help kids meet the demands of adulthood. It’s also a powerful bridge to the best of public life.”

        Maya Payne Smart, Reading For Our Lives

          “People always seem to want to know how to read faster. But with few exceptions, all the techniques and tricks of speed reading are a scam. And listening to audiobooks on 2-3X speed? I guess you could learn how to scarf your food down faster, but doesn’t that sort of miss the point of what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience? In all my years as a reader and writer, I’ve only found one way to read faster (and better). And it’s to read a lot.“

          Ryan Holiday

            “Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement that comes with the process of dislocating from a familiar context. I gather energy from this kind of movement, this estranging and unsettling, and I welcome it precisely because it’s conducive to examination, interrogation, reordering. Travel, imaginative or physical, can sharpen perception and force a measuring of distance and difference.”

            Jenny Xie, The Self Is A Fiction

              “There are too many mediocre books which exist just to entertain your mind. Therefore, read only those books which are accepted without doubt as good.”

              Lucius Annaeus Seneca, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 13)

                “What can be more precious than to communicate every day with the wisest men of the world?”

                Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 7)