Date: 1851

"For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one’s own mind, is of less value than a much smaller amount that has been fully considered."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: March 17, 1852

"I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep and the mind works like a machine without friction."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1852

"Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, / And turn those limpid eyes on mine, / And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul."

— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)

Date: 1852

"Alas! is even love too weak / To unlock the heart, and let it speak?"

— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)