Letter to Abigail Adams (28 December 1794), Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
1790s
Source: Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife
“I no more wrote than read that book which is
The self I am, half hidden as it is
From one and all who see within a kiss
The lounging formless blackness of an abyss. How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?”
"I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read"
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)
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Delmore Schwartz 11
American poet 1913–1966Related quotes
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Racial Superiority
“The only reason I read a book is because I cannot see and converse with the man who wrote it.”
Speech in Kansas City (12 May 1905), PWW (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson) 16:99
Unsourced variant: I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.
1900s
Canto V, lines 127–138 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
“I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality.”
Source: Images: My Life in Film
“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”
"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)
David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html