I totally agree and love the extension of the analogy.
There was another part of that Schopenhauer quote that mirrors what you just wrote:
"it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like."
The way I see reading a ton of books is similar to eating without digesting.
You're shoving content into your brain but not taking the time to reflect on what it means.
The digestion process is extracting nutrients from what we consume and eradicating what isn't nutritious.
We need to spend time consuming & digesting.
My favorite intellectual digestion process is writing.
Hey Mohammad, thanks for the comment!
I totally agree and love the extension of the analogy.
There was another part of that Schopenhauer quote that mirrors what you just wrote:
"it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like."