I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the differing motivations people have when they read.
William Lyon Phelps suggests that readers can be classified based on their intent when they engage with texts. Some individuals seek to retain knowledge and insights from their reading, aiming for understanding and memory retention, while others may approach reading as a means of escape or distraction, hoping to forget their current realities and immerse themselves in a different narrative.
In practice
In a book club discussion to explore different reading motivations.
Real happiness is not dependent on external things. The pond is fed from within. The kind of happiness that stays with you is the happiness that springs from inward thoughts and emotions. You must cultivate your mind if you wish to achieve enduring happiness.
Life, with all it's sorrows, cares, perplexities and heart-breaks, is more interesting than bovine placidity, hence more desirable. The more interesting it is, the happier it is.
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.
Whenever it is possible, a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money.
You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor.
American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos.
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
I wanted to use my experience to teach kids that racism has no place in hearts and minds.
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
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