"Of Walter Scott one need as little speak as of Shakspeare. He belongs to mankind,—to every age and race; and he certainly must be counted as in the first line of the great creative minds of the world. His unique glory is to have definitely succeeded in the ideal reproduction of historical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life, and truth,—a task which neither Ariosto and Tasso, nor Corneille and Racine, nor Alfieri, nor Goethe, nor Schiller,—no, nor even Shakspeare himself, entirely achieved.... In brilliancy of conception, in wealth of character, in dramatic art, in glow and harmony of color, Scott put forth all the powers of a master poet.... The genius of Scott has raised up a school of historical romance; and though the best work of Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Bulwer may take rank as true art, the endless crowd of inferior imitations are nothing but a weariness to the flesh.... Scott is a perfect library in himself.... The poetic beauty of Scott's creations is almost the least of his great qualities. It is the universality of his sympathy that is so truly great, the justice of his estimates, the insight into the spirit of each age, his intense absorption of self in the vast epic of human civilization."
Hazlitt, William. "Books let us into the souls of men, and lay open to us the secrets of our own."
Heinsius. "I no sooner come into the library 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. In the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all that know not this happiness."
Herbert, George. "This book of stars [the Bible] lights to eternal bliss."
Herschel, Sir J. "Give a man this taste [for good books] and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages."
Hillard, George S. "Here we have immortal flowers of poetry, wet with Castilian dew, and the golden fruit of Wisdom that had long ripened on the bough.... We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an evening with Shakspeare or Bacon.... We may be sure that Shakspeare never out-talked his 'Hamlet,' nor Bacon his 'Essays.'... To the gentle hearted youth, far from his home, in the midst of a pitiless city, 'homeless among a thousand homes,' the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. The hours from sunset to bedtime are his hours of peril. Let me say to such young men that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless."
Holmes, O. W. "Books are the 'negative' pictures of thought; and the more sensitive the mind that receives the images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced."