Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in read more

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.

Books are a finer world within the world.

Books are a finer world within the world.

Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when
adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give
strength to read more

Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when
adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give
strength to human compacts, nor are grave opinions brought
forward without books. Arts and sciences, the benefits of which
no mind can calculate. depend upon books.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading read more

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
read more

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.