As he recovered from his wounds, a young soldier named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. began keeping a list in a black leather journal of all the books he read. Books on law, philosophy, sociology, religion, history, economics, poetry, science. He read Montaigne, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Homer, Proust, Epictetus (\u201can astonishing book\u201d), to name just a few.<\/p>\n
When Holmes died at the age of 93, the list held the names of more than four thousand books. That sounds like a lot, but it\u2019s actually only a little more than a book a week over his life. Seneca was right: Acquiring just a few bits of wisdom a day really adds up. Not just in quantity, but also in quality. Holmes would become one of America\u2019s most celebrated jurists, spending fifty years on the bench\u2014thirty of those years as a United States Supreme Court Justice.<\/p>\n
Yes, you\u2019re busy. Yes, it\u2019s hard to find time to read. But are you busier than Seneca? Busier than De Gaulle? Than Napoleon? Than Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the great Supreme Court justices of the 20th century? No. You are not. Yes, you\u2019re smart, and you\u2019ve already done a considerable amount of learning in your time on this planet. But are you wiser than Marcus Aurelius\u2014the man who, well into old age, was still heading off to visit philosophers and teachers \u201cto learn that which I do not yet know?\u201d<\/p>\n
You are not.<\/p>\n
Learning doesn\u2019t stop. Our journey to wisdom never ends. Thus, our reading habit must be steady and consistent. Build up your wisdom step by step, action by action. No one can stop you from that…except your own procrastination and poor prioritization.<\/p>\n
So get to it. You\u2019ll be amazed at what it can add up to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As he recovered from his wounds, a young soldier named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. began keeping a list in a black leather journal of all the books he read. Books on law, philosophy, sociology, religion, history, economics, poetry, science. He read Montaigne, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Homer, Proust, Epictetus (\u201can astonishing book\u201d), to name just a few. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n