They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads. One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise.
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential.
Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. So much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake.