A Quote by Samuel Johnson
Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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Anyone who fears, as I do, that today's public schools are dangerously close to being irrelevant must read this book. The authors provide a road map-and a lifeline-showing how schools can prosper under the most difficult conditions. It is a welcome departure from all the school bashing.
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work.
I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.
The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans, paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water.
I mention this only to shew that the citations of the most judicious authors frequently deceive us, and consequently that prudence obliges us to examine quotations, by whomsoever alleged.
I've been drawing authors and politicians for newspapers for many years. I try to read up on the person; in the case of authors, read one of their books. I watch interviews via YouTube and collect pictures via the Internet.
Swift calls discretion low prudence; it is high prudence, and one of the most important elements entering into either social or political life.
For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
The diplomatic thing for me to say is that if publishers are dressing up other authors as Terry Pratchett clones then they are doing a disservice to those authors. If they didn't dress them as clones but did something different, then those authors could be pioneering in a different sense.
The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life...The Bible...should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.
Like most authors, I also love to read.
Authors do not supply imaginations.
Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.
Students who read the most also read the best, achieve the most, and stay in school the longest. Conversely, those who dont read much cannot get better at it.
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