Exclusive reading of fiction is to any one's mind just what highly spiced food and alcoholic stimulants are to the body.

The increasing rage for novel reading betokens both a famine in the intellect, and a serious peril to the mental and spiritual life.

The honest truth is that quite too large a number of fictitious works are subtle poison.

The plots of some of the most popular novels turn on the sexual relation and the violation in some form of the seventh commandment.

They kindle evil passions; they varnish and veneer vice; they deride connubial purity; they uncover what ought to be hid, and paint in attractive hues what never ought to be seen by any pure eye or named by any modest tongue.