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The Most Delightful Habit in the World
Apr. 29th, 2006 04:24 pm♠
"One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked to read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment."
-- Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
I always love these little odes to reading, especially when they carry this melancholic undertone. I recall a Bruce Lee movie in which he described his style of fighting as the art of fighting without fighting. Reading is sort of the art of living without living. And I would do it all again.
xXx
"One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked to read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment."
-- Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
I always love these little odes to reading, especially when they carry this melancholic undertone. I recall a Bruce Lee movie in which he described his style of fighting as the art of fighting without fighting. Reading is sort of the art of living without living. And I would do it all again.
