A Good Investment of Time

Your word is a lamp for my feet
and a light for my path.
   —Psalm 119:105

Dr. Charles Eliot, Harvard University president (1869–1909), once said a five-foot shelf of books could provide “a good substitute for a liberal education” to anyone who would devote fifteen minutes a day to reading them.

Editors from Collier told Eliot if he would pick the books to fill that shelf they would publish them. The result was the Harvard Classics, a 51-volume anthology of world literature classics, published in 1910, along with Eliot’s Reading Guide, titled “Fifteen Minutes a Day.” He called it a “portable university.”

Here’s an alternate use of time: you can read through the Bible by reading just three chapters a day six days a week and five chapters on Sunday—an investment of less than ten minutes per day.

The person who can’t read is no worse off
than the person who can but won’t.

Scroll to Top