William Barnes

We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modern authors should never have been able to compass our great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind. — SWIFT, _Tale of a Tub_.

A go...

Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, and says, ‘Please to walk in, Sir.’ — SOUTHEY, _Life_.

I wo...

I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny — ‘nullum esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prodesset.’ — GIBBON, _Autobiography_.

A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t. — BYRON, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.

While you converse with lords and dukes,

We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society.

Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can ...

This to a structure led well known to fame,

And called, ‘The Monument of Vanished Minds,’

Where when they thought they saw in well-sought books

The assembled souls of all that men thought wise,

It bred such awful reverence in their looks,

As if they saw the buried wr...

It is our duty to live among books. — NEWMAN, _Tracts for the Times, №2_.

What lovely things books are! — BUCKLE, _Life by Huth_.

(Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations be not found in books? — BERKELEY, _Querist_.

Read we must, be writers ever so indiffere...

I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library. — BYRON, _Moore’s Life_.

Montesquieu used to say that he had never known...

Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed. — BACON, _Advancement of Learning_.

We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in...

You that are genuine Athenians, devour with a golden Epicurism the arts and sciences, the spirits and extractions of authors. — CULVERWELL, _Light of Nature_.

He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect i...

My neighbours think me often alone, and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near to me ...

I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit...

Yet it is just

That here in memory of all books which lay

Their sure foundations in the heart of man, …

That I should here assert their rights, assert

Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce

Their benediction, speak of them as powers

For ever to be h...

On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all things which men can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books? For, indeed, is it not verily the highest act of man’s faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of man. Th...

How to survive miseries and pandemics, wars, worldly addictions, social media, media and taboos?

Start by compiling a comforting catalog of positive things and then face today’s risks.

The role that politics, religion, ...

In my youth I never entered a great library but my predominant feeling was one of disturbance of mind — not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on viewing his army, and reflecting that not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to books, the same effect would be brought about ...

Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their books. These children may most truly be called the riches of their father, and many of them have with true filial piety fed their...

Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e’er

The mighty linguist Fame or Time the mighty traveller,

That could speak or this could hear!

Majestic monument and pyramid!

Where still the shapes of parted souls abide

Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now

Enjoy...

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. — MILTON, _Areopagitica_.

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to the Bodleian were reposing here as in some dormitory or middle state.

I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-sc...

I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his own. — TENNYSON.

Words! words! words! — SHAKESPEARE.

HOURS IN A LIBRARY

Hours In A Library by Leslie Stephen

A splendid Folio Edition of writings by...

A man may be judged by his library. — BENTHAM. I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a temple. — EVELYN, _to Wotton_.

‘Father, I should like to learn to make gold.’ ‘And what would’st thou do if thou could’st make it?’ ‘Why, I would build a great house and fill it with books.’ — ...

A library is like a butcher’s shop; it contains plenty of meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in it till some good cook comes along and says, ‘Sir, I see by your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you have an...