It's Been a Good Life: Asimovian Reflections

Last week I read It's Been a Good Life, written by Isaac Asimov (late author and American Humanist Association honorary president). It was a sheer delight, and I'd like to share some of it.
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"To those who are not bookworms, it must be a curious thought that someone would read and read, letting life with all its glory pass by unnoticed, wasting the carefree days of youth, missing the wonderful interplay of muscle and sinew. Thee must seem something sad and even tragic about it, and one might wonder what impels a youngster to do it. But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredibly intensity of happiness." - p. 18

"I have never, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual avoid. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so." - p. 20

"History is the best thing to reread -- and to write. I know history so well that Earth's past is like a rich rapestry to me...in history, everything's one peice. YOu pick up history by any strand and the whole thing comes up." - p. 165

"To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to committ a form of suicide; in the long urun, a more meaningful type of suicide than the mere ending of physical life." p. -165

"Knowledge is not only power, it is happiness, and being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved." - p. 165