Man is unconquerable because he can make even his helplessness so entertaining. His motto seems to be "Even though He slay me, yet will I make fun of Him!

A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it!

They go in [to the library] not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.

Being in a hurry seems so fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically ludicrous when it is someone else.

America is still a government of the naive, for the naive, and by the naive. He who does not know this, nor relish it, has no inkling of the nature of his country.

Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.