Read the text and choose the best heading for every paragraph. A Taste For Reading
The meat and drink that we take to keep body and soul together, the raiment and amusement that we have for keeping our body warm, are necessary for our physical well being. But that is not the destined end of a man. He does not live by bread alone. He has his mind. He must feed his mind also and treat it well. He can do this by reading books. But not all men like to read books. Many, when they have nothing better to do, yawn and lounge like worthless idlers. They should be made to develop a taste for reading. It will bring them the purest form of happiness.
Constant access to the best authors creates a taste for reading. When we better understand the intrinsic value of an excellent book, we are naturally drawn towards it and feel that pleasures of palaces are nothing but shadows compared to the pleasures that a good book holds out.
Youth, the formative period of life, is the best time for cultivating a taste for reading. The young man has a tendency to love books for their own sake, to satisfy their inquisitive mind and understand how the wisest and the noblest masters of the past have tackled their subjects. This inquisitive spirit would slowly create a taste for reading in him.
To skim over the lines and turn the pages of fictions and novels — as they fall into our bands — merely to kill time will be on no avail. They may for the time being refresh the mind; but they would in the long run vitiate the taste for reading. The vitiated taste becomes a curse and corrupts the very source of life. Hence selection of books is the main problem in creating a real taste for reading.
Reading shallow books enfeebles the mind. Serious study ensures intellectual development. Philosophy brings out our full mental powers. Poetry is equally edifying. It transports us into higher regions. Biography exercises a most beneficial influence on our moral nature. It holds out before us a graphic picture of the various shades of human character and gives us a practical education as to the keynotes of success in life.
Real taste for reading is an inestimable possession — a possession more covetable than even a king's treasures. It ennobles the character of men, and makes them wiser and happier. It puts men into contact with the best society in every period in history, and teaches them their duties and responsibilities.