Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.
There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.
Laws die, books never.
We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.
