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.
She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.
The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you're better off not touching it until you're all grown up. I'm going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don't open it.
Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask 'Why?' ceaselessly.
You'll be a poorer person all your life if you don't know some of the great stories and great poems.
Though we do need more women to graduate with technical degrees, I always like to remind women that you don't need to have science or technology degrees to build a career in tech.
To read great books does not mean one becomes βbookishβ; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.
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