Quotes from Mortimer Adler

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

RULE 10, and it can be expressed thus: WHEN YOU DISAGREE, DO SO REASONABLY, AND NOT DISPUTATIOUSLY OR CONTENTIOUSLY.

The parts of fiction are the various steps that the author takes to develop his plot—the details of characterization and incident.

To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It

You will also find authors who do not know the difference between theory and practice, just as there are novelists who do not know the difference between fiction and sociology.

The first division is between playful and serious conversations. By playful conversation, I mean all forms of talk that have no set purpose, no objective to achieve, no controlling direction. In addition, like play itself, which is that form of human activity in which we engage purely for the pleasure inherent in the activity itself, conversation that is playful in intent rather than seriously motivated is conversation that is enjoyable for its own sake, and not pursued

Insufficient respect for mystery leads to intellectual suicide; insufficient penetration of mystery leads to shallowness and despair.

You have become acquainted with the characters. You have joined them in the imaginary world wherein they dwell, consented to the laws of their society, breathed its air, tasted its food, traveled its highways. Now you must follow them through their adventures.

The year after How to Read a Book was published, a parody of it appeared under the title How to Read Two Books; and Professor I. A. Richards wrote a serious treatise entitled How to Read a Page.

It is not surprising that the liberal arts were most assiduously cultivated in the Middle Ages than ever before or after. When theology is queen of the sciences, liberal education flourishes in her train.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And when we cease to grow, we begin to die.