Various

“ I would have a public library abundant in translations of the best books in all languages; yet some acquaintance with foreign and ancient literature has the liberating effect of foreign travel. He who travels by translation travels more hastily and superficially, but brings home something that is worth having, nevertheless. Translations, properly used, by shortening the labour of acquisition, add as many years to our lives as they subtract from the processes of our education. ”

“ In such a library, the sciences should be fully represented, that men may at least learn to know in what a marvellous museum they live, what a wonder-worker is giving them an exhibition daily for nothing. ”

“ Milton makes his fallen angels grow small to enter the infernal council room; but the soul, which God meant to be the spacious chamber where high thoughts and generous aspirations might commune together, shrinks and narrows itself to the measure of the meaner company that is wont to gather there, hatching conspiracies against our better selves. We are apt to wonder at the scholarship of the men of three centuries ago, and at a certain dignity of phrase that characterizes them. ”

“ There is a choice in books as in friends; and the mind sinks or rises to the level of its habitual society is subdued, as Shakspeare says of the dyer's hand, to what it works in. Cato's advice, "Consort with the good," is quite as true if we extend it to books; for they, too, insensibly give away their own nature to the mind that converses with them. They either beckon upward or drag down. ”

“ It is we who, while we might each in his humble way be helping our fellows into the right path, or adding one block to the climbing spire of a fine soul, are willing to become mere sponges saturated from the stagnant goose pond of village gossip. ”

“ One is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him. ”

“ I should like to see the works of Ruskin within the reach of every artisan among us; for I hope some day that the delicacy of touch and accuracy of eye that have made our mechanics in some departments the best in the world may give us the same supremacy in works of wider range and more purely ideal scope. ”

“ Of voyages and travels I would also have good store, especially the earlier, when the world was fresh and unhackneyed, and men saw things invisible to the modern eye. They are fast sailing ships to waft away from present trouble to the Fortunate Isles. ”

“ We spend as much time over print as they did; but, instead of communing with the choice thoughts of choice spirits, and unconsciously acquiring the grand manner of that supreme society, we diligently inform ourselves, and cover the Continent with a network of speaking wires to inform us, of such inspiring facts as that a horse belonging to Mr. ”