Society's the mother of convention.

... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.

We should live and learn; but by the time we've learned, it's too late to live.

Reward is its own virtue.

To take pride in a library kills it. Then, its motive power shifts over to the critical if admiring visitor, and apologies are necessary and acceptable and the fat is in the fire.

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.

There are many ways of discarding [books]. You can give them to friends,--or enemies,--or to associations or to poor Southern libraries. But the surest way is to lend them. Then they never come back to bother you.