In Praise of Books: A Vade Mecum for Book-lovers

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Perkins book Company, 1901 - 117 pages

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Page 100 - ... here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time...
Page 75 - No matter how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take...
Page 71 - Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good : Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
Page 12 - The mathematics and the metaphysics, Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you ; No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en : In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Page 100 - ... book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again ; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store.
Page 99 - Lecture says, or tries to say, that, life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books ; and that valuable books should, in a civilized country, be within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form, for a just price ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile price.
Page 99 - Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book ! — a message to us from the dead, — from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
Page 66 - Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Page 43 - Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books.
Page 90 - Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

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