“What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred or ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?”

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.”

“What I have understood is good; and so, I think, what I have not understood is; only the book requires a Delian diver to get at the meaning of it.”

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

“In law it is a good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.”

“A man is only as good as what he loves.”

“I'm about to start reading it again, because what good is a story you only want to read once?”

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”