Whenever you read a book and come across any wonderful phrases which you feel stir or delight your soul, don’t merely trust the power of your own intelligence, but force yourself to learn them by heart and make them familiar by meditating on them, so whenever an urgent case of affliction arises, you’ll have the remedy ready as if it were written in your mind.

– Petrarch (imagining a conversation with Augustine) from Alberto Manguel’s History of Reading.