A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.

The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.

If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.