The possession of a great many things, even the best of things, tends to blind one to the real value of anything.

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."

The possession of a great many things, even the best of things, tends to blind one to the real value of anything.

History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity.

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.

The end of reading is not more books but more life.

Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge.