The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.

Davies argues that a book’s “greatness” is not an absolute property fixed by canons or curricula, but a relational one: it emerges from the meeting between a text and a reader’s present inner life. He distinguishes mere instruction (information, moral lessons, technique) from nourishment—what “feeds your spirit,” enlarging imagination, self-knowledge, or emotional resilience. Because readers change with age and experience, the same work can strike differently across a lifetime, and different works become necessary at different moments. The remark also quietly defends eclectic, personal reading against prestige-driven taste, suggesting that the most valuable literature is what answers a current psychological or spiritual need.