There are at all times two literatures which, although scarcely known to each other, progress side by side—­the one real, the other merely apparent.  The former grows into literature that lasts.  Pursued by people who live for science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and quietly, but extremely slowly; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century, which, however, are permanent.  The other literature is pursued by people who live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop amid a great noise and shouting of those taking part, and brings yearly many thousand works into the market.  But after a few years one asks, Where are they? where is their fame, which was so great formerly?  This class of literature may be distinguished as fleeting, the other as permanent.

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It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.  To desire that a man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten.  He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is.  As the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, so will a man retain what interests him; in other words, what coincides with his system of thought or suits his ends.  Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought.  This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read:  they remember nothing about it.

Repetitio est mater studiorum.  Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.

Works are the quintessence of a mind, and are therefore always of by far greater value than conversation, even if it be the conversation of the greatest mind.  In every essential a man’s works surpass his conversation and leave it far behind.  Even the writings of an ordinary man may be instructive, worth reading, and entertaining, for the simple reason that they are the quintessence of that man’s mind—­that is to say, the writings are the result and fruit of his whole thought and study; while we should be dissatisfied with his conversation.  Accordingly, it is possible to read books written by people whose conversation would give us no satisfaction; so that the mind will only by degrees attain high culture by finding entertainment almost entirely in books, and not in men.