I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

It is the Mass the matters.

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

Libraries are not made, they grow.

Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.