building 505

“The scholar devotes all his energy to affirming or denying or reviewing all that has already been thought — he no longer thinks for himself… His instinct for self-defense has become brittle, otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a Decadent. I have seen it with my own eyes: gifted, generous and free-spirited natures, no more than thirty and already ‘wrecks’ from too much reading; nothing but matchsticks you have to strike so that they emit a spark or ‘thought’.

To read a book first thing in the morning at daybreak, at the dawn of your strength — that I call a vice!”