Montesquieu -- Pensées Diverses [Assorted Thoughts], # 1632 / 1143 (1720-1755) [ed. Guterman (1963)]

Dave — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 21:31:38 +0000

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)]

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1888-12), “A Christmas Sermon,” sec. 2, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:00:00 +0000

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).

WIST Quotations

Montesquieu -- Pensées Diverses [Assorted Thoughts], # 1632 / 1143 (1720-1755) [ed. Guterman (1963)]

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1888-12), “A Christmas Sermon,” sec. 2, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4