Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities; their chief
use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring, for ornaments in
discourse, and for ability in judgment; for expert men can execute, but
learned men are more fit to judge and censure. To spend too much time in
them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make
judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar; they perfect
nature, and are themselves perfected by experience; crafty men contemn
them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not
their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them
won by observation. Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh
and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some are to be read only in
parts, others to be read but curiously, and some few to be read wholly
with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a
ready, and writing an exact man; therefore, if a man write little, he
had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he had need of a
present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to
seem to know that he doth not know. Histories make men wise; poets
witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave;
logic and rhetoric able to contend.