Our
intellectual activities in the order of their importance may be graded
this way: first, cogitation; second, observation; third, reading.
To think without a proper amount of good reading is to limit our thinking to our own tiny plot of ground. The crop cannot be large. To observe only and neglect reading is to deny ourselves the immense value of other people's observations; and since the better books are written by trained observers the loss is sure to be enormous. Reading is one of the best sources to stimulate observation and encourage cogitation.
I love to read a story that resonates within and connects me with my own thoughts. For those of you who love to read, you will identify with the last sentence in this post. But first, read what one man had to say on “Some Thoughts on Books and Reading”.
To think without a proper amount of good reading is to limit our thinking to our own tiny plot of ground. The crop cannot be large. To observe only and neglect reading is to deny ourselves the immense value of other people's observations; and since the better books are written by trained observers the loss is sure to be enormous. Reading is one of the best sources to stimulate observation and encourage cogitation.
I love to read a story that resonates within and connects me with my own thoughts. For those of you who love to read, you will identify with the last sentence in this post. But first, read what one man had to say on “Some Thoughts on Books and Reading”.
Nearly a century ago Emerson pointed out that if it were
possible for a man to begin to read the day he was born and to go on reading
without interruption for seventy years, at the end of that time he would have
read only enough books to fill a tiny niche in the British Library. Life is so
short and the books available to us are so many that no man can possibly be
acquainted with more than a fraction of one percent of the books published.
That writer does the most for us who brings to our attention thoughts that lay close to our minds waiting to be acknowledged as our own. Such a man acts as a midwife to assist at the birth of ideas that had been gestating long within our souls, but which without his help might not have been born at all.
There are few emotions so satisfying as the joy that comes from the act of recognition when we see and identify our own thoughts.
(excerpts from A.W. Tozer)
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