Books

“ So I am going to ask you after all to pass a tranquil hour with me in pondering a quiet chapter in the history of books. There is a loud cry in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes. Everybody calls for hints what to read, and what to look out for in reading. ”

“ It is in this insatiable curiosity that our deepest interest in literature lies.
Books explain us to ourselves. They reveal to us capabilities in our nature before unsuspected. They make intelligible the meaning and significance of mental experiences. There are books the constant rereading of which presents itself to an imaginative man as a sort of moral duty, so great is the illumination which they throw upon the inner being. ”

“ For books are more than books, they are the life, The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived, and worked, and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives. ”

“ When they write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s pulse. ”

“ It was feelingly said by one of the gentle English essayists last named: "How pleasant is the thought that such lovers of books have themselves become books!" and do so become evermore, beginning and ending with a secluded library shelf, planting the seed of kindly influences close to the noble shade which sheltered them in youth, and under which they slumbered many a summer's day. ”

“ Yet, behold, Behold!—the world of books is still the world; ”

“ In books we live continually in the decisive moments of history, and in the deepest experience of individual lives. The flowers which we cull painfully and at long intervals in our personal history blossom {203} in profusion here, and the air is full of fragrance which touches our own life only in its happier times. In our libraries we meet great minds on an equality, and feel at ease with them. ”

“ It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, the texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a complete representation of it. ”

“ Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. ”

“ They bring into my life the inner life of all the observers, thinkers, orators, seers, poets, and prophets of the ages, and yet what are books but the records of men's observations and their thoughts upon those observations? All books are not good. ”

“ By the magic of some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in turn, determine the continued choice of books, so that selection and result perpetuate themselves, forming an unceasing contribution to the nature of life. ”

“ With the world's book-shelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books—the very manna sent down from heaven to feed your souls—you are forced to read a [Pg 27] hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write; a book from which no human being can learn anything; a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life. ”

“ For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader? In arithmetic, geometry, perspective, optics, astronomy, architecture, sculptura, pictura, of which so many and such elaborate treatises are of late written; in mechanics and their mysteries, military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardening, planting, etc.... What so sure, what so pleasant? What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose! ”

“ God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. ”

“ Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course. ”

“ For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. ”

“ So we have novels for children; novels religious, scientific, historical, archaeological, psychological, pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of adventure and exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of books called novels of society. Not only is everything turned into a story, real or so called, but there must be a story in everything. ”

“ By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly compiled, and have their run and success even among the learned, as if they were the result of a new man’s thinking, and their birth were attended with some natural throes. ”

“ For these rich interpretations we must turn to art, and especially to the art of literature; and in literature we must turn especially to the small group of works which, by reason of the adequacy with which they convey and illustrate these interpretations, hold the first places,—the books of life. ”

“ But in the culture of the imagination, books, although not the only, are the readiest means of supplying the food convenient for it, and a hundred books may be had where even one work of art of the right sort is unattainable, seeing such must be of some size as well as of thorough excellence. ”

“ The result is that those who care about books can differentiate them at a glance. They know [Pg 169] what is the approved style and line for biography and history, for poetry and fiction, for sermons, for gift-books, and so ad infinitum. The ‘Life’ of So-and-so, and the ‘Annals’ of Such-and-such, are unmistakeable; they have respectability written on every corner and angle of them. The dull brown or the dull green is sufficiently obvious to everyone. ”

“ The books of power, as distinguished from the books of knowledge, include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures, and constitute, in the last analysis, a comparatively small group, with which any student can thoroughly familiarise himself. The literary impulse of the race has expressed itself in a great variety of works, of varying charm and power; but the books which are fountain-heads of vitality, ideas, and beauty, are few in number. ”

“ NOVELS, ROMANCES, AND POPULAR LEGENDS.—Poetry and prose fiction form the general literature of a nation, and are distinguished from the literature of the study or from special literature, which consists chiefly of books for the use of distinct classes or parties. Fiction borders closely on the province of history, which, in its broad and comprehensive outlines, must necessarily leave unnoticed many of the finer lights and shades of human life, descriptions of motives, private characters, and domestic scenes. ”

“ To this day I often dream of being in a book-shop, turning over endless piles of marvellously quaint parchment bound books in letres blake, and what is singular, they are generally works quite unknown to the world—first discoveries—unique! ”

“ I always remember that they could give us a number of little books which would tell, each book for some one country, or some one parish, the verses, or the stories, or the events that would make every lake or mountain a man can see from his own door an excitement in his imagination. ”

“ Aphorism or maxim, let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly stored with it; and that it is one of the main objects, apart from the mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading of books. ”

“ To these masterpieces, which have been called the books of life, all men may turn with the assurance that as the supreme achievements of the imagination they have the power of awakening, stimulating, and enriching it in the highest degree. For the genuine reader, who sees in a book what the writer has put there, repeats in a way the process through which the maker of the book passed. ”

“ Our principle is, that books, instead of growing mouldy behind an iron grating, should be worn out under the eyes of many readers. ”

“ In considering the popularity of these long, didactic works, it must not be forgotten that the people of that day were almost entirely without books. A single volume was the treasure of a whole household. ”

“ so, of his gentleness, Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. ”

“ And books, again, of very moderate value, written by men of one-sided intellect or founded on somewhat shallow theories, may, by virtue of some special quality, or as embodying some potent idea, attain to a permanent place in the world of letters. ”

“ Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it. ”

“ Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily. ”

“ There is still too much of superstition and reverence mingled with the thought of books and literature, and study and studentship in the popular mind. Books are tools, of which here and there one is useful for a certain purpose to a certain person. ”

“ The second preliminary is to surround yourself with books, to create for yourself a bookish atmosphere. The merely physical side of books is important—more important than it may seem to the inexperienced. ”

“ In proportion as this principle is recognised and allowed free play in the habits that obtain amongst men who know books, their habits will be inspired habits. Books will be read and lived in the same breath, and books that have been lived will be written. ”

“ The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may divide literature into two great classes of books. The smaller class of the two consists of the books written by people who had something to say. They had in life learned something, or seen something, or done something, which they really wanted and needed to tell to other people. They told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twentieth part of the printed literature of the world. It is the part which contains all that is worth reading. The other nineteen-twentieths make up the other class. ”

“ Moreover, as far as I can learn, it is only in Great Britain and America that the form of books is now the subject of the ceaseless experiment and ingenuity which are the signs of a period of artistic activity. ”

“ That to use books rightly, was to go to them for help: to appeal to them, when our own knowledge and power of thought failed: to be led by them into wider sight,—purer conception,—than our own, and receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinion. ”

“ The student should bear in mind, therefore, that the following summary of our recent literature is based largely upon personal opinion; that it selects a few authors by way of illustration, omitting many others who may be of equal or greater importance. We are confronted by a host of books that serve the prime purpose of literature by giving pleasure; but what proportion of them are enduring books, or what few of them will be known to readers of the next century as the Sketch Book and Snow-Bound are known to us,—these are questions that only Father Time can answer. ”

“ Herein is described the making, use, and circulation of books considered as a means of literary culture. It seemed possible to throw a useful sidelight on literary history, and to introduce some human interest into the study of bibliography, if the place held by books in the life of the Middle Ages could be indicated. ”

“ Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are treated. ”

“ Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art. ”

“ Nearly all our prose romance, and most of our poetry, history, and miscellaneous literature, belong to the steam age in origin and spirit. We now write ten times as many books, and publish fifty times as many volumes annually, as they did in the last century. ”

“ "I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books—brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity." ”

“ and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot. ”