Learning serves for pleasure, for ornamentation, and for equipping oneself; it brings the most pleasure when we are alone and withdrawn; we adorn conversations with what we have read, and we equip ourselves for conducting business.
Experienced individuals can handle, and perhaps assess, each individual detail; but for general advice, planning, and skillful management of affairs, educated people are certainly the best.
Spending too much time on reading means laziness; presenting oneself as learned too often is affectation; forming judgments always and solely according to book rules is scholasticism.
Learning perfects man’s nature, and learning itself is perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like plants in nature that need to be pruned by learning, and only learning provides general guidance if not bound by experience.
Cunning people disdain learning, the ordinary world admires them, and the wise make use of them; for learning is not an end in itself, but its purpose lies in the wisdom that is beyond it and transcends it, and is acquired through experience.
Do not read to contradict and refute; nor to believe and accept blindly; nor to find topics for conversation and debate; read to judge and consider.
Some books should only be tasted, others swallowed, and only a few should be chewed and digested; that is to say, some books should be read only in parts, others read but not carefully, and only a small number should be read in their entirety, diligently and attentively.
Some books can be read in summaries and excerpts, but only if they are about something less important and less significant books; otherwise, distilled books are like distilled water – tasteless and deficient.
Reading fills a person, discussing what has been read makes them eloquent, and writing makes their knowledge more precise. And therefore, those who write little must have a good memory; those who talk little must be alert; and those who read little must be very cunning, to appear that they know what they do not know.
History makes people wise, poetry sensitive, mathematics The intelligent ones, the deep thinkers of natural philosophy, the dignified moral ones, skilled in the art of logic and rhetoric in debating. Studies flow into character (Learning becomes part of nature).
There are no obstacles or barriers of the mind that could not be eliminated through appropriate learning, just as physical illnesses can be eliminated through appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the kidneys and bladder; hunting for the lungs and chest; gentle walking for the stomach; horseback riding for the head and so on.
And therefore, if a person’s mind wanders, let them study mathematics; because in the process of proving, if anything, even the slightest thing distracts their attention, they must start all over again.
If someone is not capable of perceiving or finding differences, let them study scholastics because they are nitpickers. If someone can’t discuss things and remember one thing to prove another, let them study legal cases. Thus, for every deficiency of the mind, a specific remedy can be found.