Seeds for Thought

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Matthew 7: 7-8

"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information."

"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed."

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu; "nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify the taste, take the attractiveness out of low pleasures, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading.

Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely, companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow

Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
—Shakespeare.

Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. —Socrates.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. —Franklin

This above all,—to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—Shakespeare.