A Quote by Henry Ward Beecher

Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein. — © Henry Ward Beecher
Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.
I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich.
To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.
When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.
It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.
Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men's minds are also injured by them.
Attempts to defend amusement parks and circuses on the grounds that they 'educate' people about animals should not be taken seriously. Such enterprises are part of the commercial entertainment industry. The most important lesson they teach impressionable young minds is that it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity for human amusement.
'Sanctus' was done on speculation. I had no agent or publisher. I was being sensible, I suppose, by writing a standalone novel. I figured if that one didn't work, no one would be interested in reading a sequel.
Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius, and he who carries that quality to absurdity has reached it; which is always a source of amusement to sensible people.
If you buy a book on golf instruction buy the thinnest book you can find. The thinner the book, chances are the easier and more elementary the instruction. It can do one of two things: help you more or hurt you less. Both are good compared to the alternative.
No matter how healthy, intelligent or affluent we may be, if our minds are weak, then our happiness will also be frail and brittle. Our minds of faith, moreover, enable us to bring out the full potential in all things and situations, so it is crucial that we strive to forge our minds of faith.
In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.
If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all. Why not new minds with new programs? Because where you find people working on programs, you don't find new minds, you find old ones. Programs and old minds go together like buggy whips and buggies.
Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.
I often hear people say that they read to escape reality, but I believe that what they’re really doing is reading to find reason for hope, to find strength. While a bad book leaves readers with a sense of hopelessness and despair, a good novel, through stories of values realized, of wrongs righted, can bring to readers a connection to the wonder of life. A good novel shows how life can and ought to be lived. It not only entertains but energizes and uplifts readers.
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