Go down on your knees for a moment in order to prepare yourself for this reading, and kiss your Bible affectionately on beginning and ending. You must get to esteem above everything else every word of that book, and to esteem other books only in so far as they approach it. After having thus read the whole Bible, you would do well to confine yourself to the Psalms in the Old Testament, and to the Epistles of St. Paul in the New. If you could learn those two parts by heart, it would be of great advantage to your soul. I should not advise you to widen the circle of your philosophical studies, but, on the contrary, to narrow and concentrate them.
Concentration is the prime and sole element of strength.
Learn to sound thoroughly a few lines even of an indifferent author, at a time. Nothing can be turned to sound except what has been ripened by meditation. A large range of reading dazzles the mind, and may, in the case of him who has a good memory, dazzle others, but it gives neither solidity nor depth. Depth always supposes extent, but extent does not involve depth. You may take as a penance, for the faults of which you speak, a prostration of ten minutes in your room.