"Next to a friend's discourse, no morsel is more delicious than a ripe book,—a book whose flavor is as refreshing at the thousandth tasting as at the first."
"Next to a personal introduction, a list of one's favorite authors were the best admittance to his character and manners."
"A good book perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers."
Atkinson, W. P. "Who can over-estimate the value of good books,—those ships of thought, as Bacon so finely calls them, voyaging through the sea of time, and carrying their precious freight so safely from generation to generation?"
Arnott, Dr. "Books,—the miracle of all possessions, more wonderful than the wishing-cap of the Arabian tales; for they transport instantly, not only to all places, but to all times."
Bacon. "Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities. Their chief use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring; for ornaments, in discourse; and for ability, in judgment.... To spend too much time in them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by experience. Crafty men contemn them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider.... Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready, and writing an exact man. Therefore, if a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he hath need of a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not know. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematicians subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend."
Barrow. "He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter."
Bartholin. "Without books God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness."
Beaconsfield, Lord. "The idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind and on the discovery of truth is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to man; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal."
"Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primeval earth, its crest is lost in the shadowy splendor of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven."