U.S. Intellectual History Blog

A Quote for Tuesday

“In my case, every kind of reading belongs among my recreations–hence among things that liberate me from myself, that allow me to walk about in strange sciences and souls–that I no longer take seriously. Reading is precisely my recreation from my own seriousness. During periods when I am hard at work you will not find me surrounded by books: I’d beware of letting anyone near me talk, much less think. And that is what reading would mean.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1908; New York: Vintage, 1967), 242.