Mortimer J. Adler Quote

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey2. The Old Testament3. Aeschylus – Tragedies4. Sophocles – Tragedies5. Herodotus – Histories6. Euripides – Tragedies7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings9. Aristophanes – Comedies10. Plato – Dialogues11. Aristotle – Works12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13. Euclid – Elements14. Archimedes – Works15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections16. Cicero – Works17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things18. Virgil – Works19. Horace – Works20. Livy – History of Rome21. Ovid – Works22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion26. Ptolemy – Almagest27. Lucian – Works28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties30. The New Testament31. Plotinus – The Enneads32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33. The Song of Roland34. The Nibelungenlied35. The Saga of Burnt Njál36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43. Thomas More – Utopia44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58. John Milton – Works59. Molière – Comedies60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69. William Congreve – The Way of the World70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets