“A busy man has a right to amusement, and nobody else has. A very earnest, intense, sober man has a right to wit and mirth. That is his privilege. But a man that twitters and laughs all the time is a fool. A man that is bent on the acquisition of fact, and of principle, and of knowledge, has a right to unbend, and to read sporting papers; and certainly funny papers are not to be disallowed. There is much in them that may do a man good, as a relaxation – as an alternative. But it is painful and sickening to see a young man who makes the Sunday morning journal his classics; who studies all the things he knows out of a fifth-class trashy newspaper; who knows something about the horses that run, something about gambling saloons, and a good deal about drinking saloons, and a good deal about scandal; who reads papers that minister to his morbid appetites, to his lower passions, to the meanest parts of his nature, feculent, dripping, reeking with things that are low and unmanly. Is it not shameful for a man to give his time to reading and glozing over such contemptible stuff? Ought not a man to be ashamed to let all the great and noble themes of true secular knowledge go past him unheeded and unexplored, and spend his leisure in these miserable communings of miserable men with the most miserable parts of themselves.”

Please forgive me for the Twitter reference, I know nothing about it and I didn't mean to meddle, but the application is easy.

H.W.Beecher - picture from Internet