Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.
–Paxton Hood
I went to learn who the heck this person is, since I liked the quote so much, and found another by him:
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, “The medicines of the soul.”
I’m still not sure who Paxton Hood is, but I did find a marvelously useful Quotation Search Engine.
There’s an author who wrote a book about Scottish superstitions and another (Edwin Paxton Hood) who wrote a book about 18th-century Christian leaders. They may be the same person—that’s unclear. There’s a band from Michigan that uses that name. There’s an actor whose full name was Sydney Oughton Paxton Hood, but who seemed to largely use the name Sydney Paxton. I’m assuming the author (or one of the authors) is the most likely source of the quote.
