"Books are like medicine. Good reading can cure stupidity." It is said to come from Liu Xiang's "Shuo Yuan" in the Western Han Dynasty, which means that books are like good medicine, and people who are good at reading can cure dullness (like medical treatment).
Liu Xiang is a great scholar and editor. He was born into a noble family and was the fourth-generation grandson of Liu Jiao, the younger brother of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han Dynasty. He served as an auxiliary bureaucrat very close to the emperor, but his main job throughout his life was not to be an official, but to be an editor and read.
He devoted all his energy to studying books at Tianlu Pavilion (Royal Library), serving as the "chief editor" of classics, biographies, poems, and poems. He spent more than 20 years to compile mountains of books over the past century. He reorganized the palace collection, revised "Warring States Policy", compiled "New Preface", "Shuo Yuan", "Biography of Martyrs", "Hong Fan's Five Elements Biography", etc. Later, Liu Yiqing's "Shishuo Xinyu", It is also derived from Liu Xiang's "Shi Shuo" and other books.
Books are like medicine, and good reading can cure stupidity
Liu Xiang, a classics scholar from the Western Han Dynasty in my country, has a famous saying: Books are like medicine, and good reading can cure stupidity. He believes that reading can cure all kinds of "stupid diseases" in people. The British Renaissance philosopher Bacon also believed that various mental deficiencies can be improved through the pursuit of knowledge - just like physical deficiencies can be improved through appropriate exercise. No one is perfect since ancient times, especially now that life is fast-paced and stressful. People are more or less infected with some "diseases": confusion, impetuousness, laziness, stubbornness, etc. In my opinion, reading is just the right medicine.
Reading can cure confusion.
Confusion means not being able to find a direction, especially when you are young, with little experience and many temptations to choose from, which inevitably leads to confusion and hesitation. A young reader once wrote a letter to Mr. Yang Jiang for advice, expressing his confusion about life. Mr. Yang Jiang wrote back, "Your problem is mainly that you don't read much and think too much." This is a simple yet insightful summary. How to keep the spiritual platform clear and clear amidst the complexity, so as not to cause chaos? Don't be afraid of clouds covering your eyes, just because you are at the highest level. Reading can help people understand right and wrong, distinguish right from wrong, and discover the essence through phenomena. When cognition reaches a certain level, people will naturally be able to see through the clouds and see the sun, and sift through the sand to pick out gold. The experiences in previous books are quite enlightening for us to take a good life path. For every additional point of experience, one point of confusion decreases.
Reading can cure impatience.
To be impetuous is to be unable to calm down and remain calm. For example, many people are addicted to mobile phones. They clearly have work to do, but they check Weibo and Moments every once in a while, and the day passes before they know it. Not being able to calm down and focus on one thing is impetuous. When reading, you must first calm down, otherwise you will not be able to read, and as the pages turn, it can cultivate concentration. Reading cannot bring utilitarian effects in the short term, and it may seem like a useless thing, but as long as it is done from the heart, perseveres, and works over time, the effects will gradually be reflected. I found that most of the friends around me who love reading and read a lot have the ability to be calm and focused, rarely impetuous, and not eager for quick success.
Reading can cure laziness.
The current prevalence of laziness has even given rise to buzzwords such as "lazy cancer". One sign of laziness is procrastination. It takes a long time to get up and work until the deadline. Everything is "tomorrow, tomorrow", and no matter how great the ambitions and grand plans are, they are wasted by delays. There is also a kind of laziness that manifests itself as a trick. For example, many people replace reading with browsing. They think they have learned knowledge by looking at the web or mobile phones. It seems that they are diligently pursuing it, but in fact they are lazy in reading. As the saying goes, good medicine tastes bitter, and continuous and in-depth reading also requires hard work. Think about those seekers of knowledge who shine in the snow and steal the light from the wall, and look at those "students" with dense schedules. There is no trace of slackness or laxity in them, but they are full of self-discipline, self-improvement, and hard work.
Reading can cure stubbornness.
Stubbornness means believing too much and insisting on one's own opinion. Few people can truly "don't be stubborn, don't be me", but it is more common to see them blushing. The greater harm of stubbornness is to replace "people's opinions" with "my opinion" and impose one's own values ????and ideas on others. The root cause of stubbornness is lack of knowledge. The more superficial people are, the more stubborn they are. The frog in the well always thinks that the sky is just such a small circle. Confucius climbed the East Mountain and became a small Lu, and climbed the Taishan Mountain and became a small world. The more his knowledge and experience increased, the more open-minded he became. Experience can only be accumulated over time, but knowledge can be increased through reading. Books are a door to understand the world. Those who can walk through this door will naturally understand the vastness of the world and the insignificance of oneself. They will become more humble and self-motivated, and will become less and less stubborn and self-righteous.
Pick up a book, no matter it is a classic or a pleasant sketch, whether it is economics and management, literature, history and philosophy, you can read them all. Hold on to the scroll to experience the joy of reading, "sitting in front of the moving wall with a Wei wen lamp, singing loudly while the snow falls in the hut at midnight", and all kinds of "silly diseases" will naturally be cured without medicine.