Ravensong Poetry And Writing Blog by Donovan Baldwin

My copy of The Art Of Thinking, purchased 1963.

What they are, you know best, and I do not know in the least. A book, like a landscape, is a state of consciousness varying with readers. There exists some book, pamphlet, article in an encyclopedia, or possibly an old clipping from a newspaper that once set you thinking; there may be many...

The something evocative for you may be poetry, history, philosophy, the sciences, or moral sciences, i.e. the progress of mankind. Some people who go to sleep over a volume will be interested by a review which they think more condensed or better within their reach. Read reviews if they help you to think, that is to say, if they leave in your mind images that will go on living when you have forgotten where they came from; read a Shakespeare calendar at the rate of four lines a day... read algebra, read the lives of great inventors or of great businessmen, read 'that' kind of books which you and nobody else know to be thought-productive for you."

The Art of Thinking (1928)

Abbe Ernest Dimnet