To delight in reading is to trade life’s dreary moments for moments of pure joy.
[Aimer à lire, c’est faire un échange des heures d’ennui que l’lon doit avoir en sa vie contre des heures délicieuses.]
Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Pensées Diverses [Assorted Thoughts], # 1632 / 1143 (1720-1755) [ed. Guterman (1963)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.
[E.g. (1900)]To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.
[E.g. (1936)]To love to read is to make an exchange of the inevitable hours of boredom in one's life, for some delightful hours.
[tr. Clark (2012)]
Quotations about:
dreariness
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1888-12), “A Christmas Sermon,” sec. 2, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4
(Source)
Originally written in the winter of 1887-88. Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 12 (1892).
