“A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss”

— Johann Gottfried Herder

Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betressend (1780-81), Vierundzwanzigster Brief; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 10, p. 260. Translation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographia Literaria (London: Rest Fenner, 1817) vol. 1, ch. 11, pp. 233-34.
Context: With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss" by Johann Gottfried Herder?

Johann Gottfried Herder18

German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic 1744–1803

Related quotes

“However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

In a letter to his sister, New Year's Day, 1882. Quoted in the Preface
Matthew Arnold's Notebooks (1902)

“Free press: all may read whatever is printed.”

Karlheinz Deschner (1924–2014) German writer and activist

Freie Presse: jeder darf lesen, was gedruckt wird.
Nur Lebendiges schwimmt gegen den Strom

“A person who does not read is no better than one cannot read.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Source: Lead the Field

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

“Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office doing business, and also reading a little of L'escholle des filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

February 9, 1668
Diary

“Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff reading.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

31 May 1929, in a letter to K.Sisam, Oxford University Press. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, p. 20, ed. J.H.Bennett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
1910s–1920s