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 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.
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A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books.
Tim O'Reilly
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A literary "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - good writing is evident to an agile mind. I like it, and there is some truth to it, but it is also written by a professional writer (albeit one with an exceptional mind).
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There's no bad reader if he/she pays for book…
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Daemon wrote:'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) This is a typo or I'm dense.
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Absurdicuss wrote:Daemon wrote:'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) This is a typo or I'm dense. 'Tisn't a typo, I think 'Tis archaic. 
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This is no book that is good for everyone. A good book is a good book even its reader do not appreciate it.
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Daemon wrote:'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Henry David Thoreau said once something on the matter of reading books...
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”
And Emerson also said...
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."
I have pondered over these words for a long time.
And I sincerely consider that books, paintings, music,
every kind of art that elevates the hearts and minds of men
are just physical objects like ink on paper or canvas with colors spread on its surface.
It is us, our hearts and minds that make it happen; we set free the wonders hidden in a physical plain.
Therefore, to a certain extent, yes, it is the reader that makes the book; and the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, right?
However, eyes are needed to discern good words or beauty,
but without any good words or beauty to gaze at... what good are the eyes for?
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Capitán, both of those quotes are gems.
I particularly like Thoreau's view of reading. I tend to be a slow reader because I stop and reflect upon what I read. By comparison many of my friends mow through a book (mostly of the mental chewing gum variety) every day or two. I also come across many Amazon reviews where the entire book, which may have taken years to write, was read in a single sleepless night before the reader moved on to another book, as if reading were some kind of drug or insatiable appetite.
I don't get it. To me that's like encountering a restaurant with the finest cuisine which goes to the trouble of creating the perfect ambience and a 7-course meal . . . and you arrive to devour it feverishly in minutes, belch, and ask, "What's on TV?"
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Context from : "SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE" Chapter XI
SuccessMy next point is that in the scale of powers it is not talent but sensibility which is best: talent confines, but the central life puts us in relation to all. How often it seems the chief good to be born with a cheerful temper and well adjusted to the tone of the human race. Such a man feels himself in harmony, and conscious by his receptivity of an infinite strength. Like Alfred, "good fortune accompanies him like a gift of God." Feel yourself, and be not daunted by things. 'T is the fulness of man that runs over into objects, and makes his Bibles and Shakspeares and Homers so great. The joyful reader borrows of his own ideas to fill their faulty outline, and knows not that lie borrows and gives. There is something of poverty in our criticism. We assume that there are few great men, all the rest are little; that there is but one Homer, but one Shakespeare, one Newton, one Socrates. But the soul in her beaming hour does not acknowledge these usurpations. We should know how to praise Socrates, or Plato, or Saint John, without impoverishing us. In good hours we do not find Shakespeare or Homer over-great, only to have been translators of the happy present, and every man and woman divine possibilities. ' T is the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss, in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear.http://www.rwe.org/complete-works/vii---society-and-solitude/chapter-xi-success.html
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T'anks Verbie. I knew it had to be me.
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