...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.

Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.

A hedge between keeps friendship green.

...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.