Suffer fools gladly; they may be right.

The poor are the only consistent altruists; they sell all they have and give it to the rich.

Beware of your habits. The better they are the more surely they will be your undoing.

People who want to be amused have lost the art of living.

A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with "a sort of greedy enjoyment," as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was "saturated with the bouquet of silence."

Books are never out of humour; never envious or jealous, they answer all questions with readiness; ... they teach us how to live and how to die; they dispel melancholy by their mirth, and amuse by their wit; they prepare the soul to suffer everything and desire nothing; they introduce us to ourselves.

Past and present, it is all the same, books are necromancers, they exercise an influence more varied, more lasting, than any magic known to man.