Zhu Xi 朱熹
later 12th century · Song China
A square pond of half an acre opens like a mirror, and sky light and cloud shadows wander there together. I ask how it can be so clear: because living water comes to it from the source.
半畝方塘一鑑開，天光雲影共徘徊。
問渠那得清如許，爲有源頭活水來。"Thoughts on Reading," the first poem, in the Complete Song Poems
In the same thread
The Daughter of Takasue 菅原孝標女
1021 (recalled c. 1060) · Heian Japan · At fourteen, the day an aunt gave her the fifty-odd volumes of the Tale of Genji in their box
The Tale of Genji, which I had only glimpsed in snatches, in a hurry, never understanding it and aching to know more: to read it from the first volume, with no one about, lying behind my curtain and drawing out one volume after another, was a feeling I would not have traded for the rank of empress.
はしるはしる、わづかに見つつ、心も得ず心もとなく思ふ源氏を、一の巻よりして、人もまじらず、几帳の内にうち臥して、引き出でつつ見る心地、后の位も何にかはせむ。Sarashina Diary (Sarashina nikki)
The Daughter of Takasue 菅原孝標女
1021 (recalled c. 1060) · Heian Japan
All day long, and at night for as long as my eyes stayed open, I kept the lamp close and did nothing but read it.
昼は日ぐらし、夜は目の覚めたるかぎり、灯を近くともして、これを見るよりほかのことなければSarashina Diary (Sarashina nikki)
Tao Yuanming 陶淵明
late 4th century · Eastern Jin China · A self-portrait written as if it were someone else's biography
He likes to read, but does not insist on understanding everything. Whenever something strikes home, he is so happy he forgets to eat.
好讀書，不求甚解；每有會意，便欣然忘食。"Biography of Mr. Five Willows"
Olaudah Equiano
1789 · West Africa · London · Looking back on his boyhood, sold as a slave and aboard a European ship for the first time
I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me
The autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us