The Bookworm :: Carl Spitzweg

It is far from my intention to depreciate the value or deny the usefulness of books, without exception: a few well-chosen treatises, carefully perused and thoroughly digested, will deserve and reward our pains; but a multiplicity of reading is seldom attended with a good effect.

Besides the confusion it often brings upon the judgment and memory, it occasions a vast expense of time, indisposes for close thinking, and keeps us poor, in the midst of seeming plenty, by reducing us to live upon a foreign supply, instead of labouring to improve and increase the stock of our own reflections.

– John Newton in his letter "A Plan of a Compendious Christian Library" (Works of John Newton, Volume 1, 236). Paragraphing added.

Are you reserving sufficient time in your life to reflect on Scripture?