The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 27

That from my bokes maketh me to goon But yt be seldom on the holy day, Save, certeynly, whan that the monethe of May Is comen, and I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge; Farewell my boke, and my devocioun."

[5] Little.

[6] Faith.

[7] None.

=Cicero=. "Studies are the aliment of youth, the comfort of old age, an adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity, and a delight in our home."

=Clarke, James Freeman=. "When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing,--how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from Heaven,--I give eternal blessings for this gift, and pray that we may use it aright, and abuse it not."

=Coleridge=. "Some readers are like the hour-gla.s.s. Their reading is as the sand; it runs in and runs out, but leaves not a vestige behind.

Some, like a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in the same state, only a little dirtier. Some, like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pa.s.s away, and retains only the refuse and dregs.

The fourth cla.s.s may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting away all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems."

=Collyer, Robert=. "Do you want to know how I manage to talk to you in this simple Saxon? I will tell you. I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night; all the rest was task work.

These were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakspeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. These were like a well of pure water; and this is the first step I seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. From the days when we used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan, there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books.... I could not go home for the Christmas of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said, 'I notice thou's fond o' reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's 'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of Crusoe."

=Curtis, G. W=. "Books are the ever-burning lamps of acc.u.mulated wisdom."

=De Quincey=. "Every one owes to the impa.s.sioned books he has read many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them.... A great scholar depends not simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination,--bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones into the unity of breathing life."

=Diodorus=. "Books are the medicine of the mind."

=Emerson=. "The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader."

=Erasmus=. "A little before you go to sleep read something that is exquisite and worth remembering, and contemplate upon it till you fall asleep; and when you awake in the morning call yourself to an account for it."

=Farrar, Canon=. "If all the books of the world were in a blaze, the first twelve which I should s.n.a.t.c.h out of the flames would be the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Homer, aeschylus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth. Of living writers I would save, first, the works of Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin."

=Fenelon=. "If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all."

=Freeman, E. A=. (the historian). "I feel myself quite unable to draw up a list (of the best books), as I could not trust my own judgment on any matters not bearing on my special studies, and I should be doubtless tempted to give too great prominence to them."

=Fuller, Thomas=. "It is thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind."

=Gibbon=. "A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. I would not exchange it for the glory of the Indies."

=Gladstone=. "When I was a boy I used to be fond of looking into a bookseller's shop; but there was nothing to be seen there that was accessible to the working-man of that day. Take a Shakspeare, for example. I remember very well that I gave 2 16_s._ 0_d._ for my first copy; but you can get any one of Shakspeare's Plays for seven cents.

Those books are accessible now which were formerly quite inaccessible.

We may be told that you want amus.e.m.e.nt, but that does not include improvement. There are a set of worthless books written now and at times which you should avoid, which profess to give amus.e.m.e.nt; but in reading the works of such authors as Shakspeare and Scott there is the greatest possible amus.e.m.e.nt in its best form. Do you suppose when you see men engaged in study that they dislike it? No!... I want you to understand that mult.i.tudes of books are constantly being prepared and placed within reach of the population at large, for the most part executed by writers of a high stamp, having subjects of the greatest interest, and which enable you, at a moderate price, not to get cheap literature which is secondary in its quality, but to go straight into the very heart,--if I may so say, into the sanctuary of the temple of literature,--and become acquainted with the greatest and best works that men of our country have produced."

=G.o.dwin, William=. "It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them."

=Goldsmith=. "An author may be considered as a merciful subst.i.tute to the legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing them."

=Hale, Sir Matthew=. "Read the Bible reverently and attentively, set your heart upon it, and lay it up in your memory, and make it the direction of your life; it will make you a wise and good man."

=Hamerton, P. H=. "The art of reading is to skip judiciously."

=Harrison, Frederic=. "The best authors are never dark horses. The world has long ago closed the great a.s.size of letters, and judged the first places everywhere."

"The reading of great books is usually an acquired faculty, not a natural gift. If you have not got the faculty, seek for it with all your might."

"Of Walter Scott one need as little speak as of Shakspeare. He belongs to mankind,--to every age and race; and he certainly must be counted as in the first line of the great creative minds of the world. His unique glory is to have definitely succeeded in the ideal reproduction of historical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life, and truth,--a task which neither Ariosto and Ta.s.so, nor Corneille and Racine, nor Alfieri, nor Goethe, nor Schiller,--no, nor even Shakspeare himself, entirely achieved.... In brilliancy of conception, in wealth of character, in dramatic art, in glow and harmony of color, Scott put forth all the powers of a master poet.... The genius of Scott has raised up a school of historical romance; and though the best work of Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Bulwer may take rank as true art, the endless crowd of inferior imitations are nothing but a weariness to the flesh.... Scott is a perfect library in himself.... The poetic beauty of Scott's creations is almost the least of his great qualities. It is the universality of his sympathy that is so truly great, the justice of his estimates, the insight into the spirit of each age, his intense absorption of self in the vast epic of human civilization."

=Hazlitt, William=. "Books let us into the souls of men, and lay open to us the secrets of our own."

=Heinsius=. "I no sooner come into the library but I bolt the door to me, excluding l.u.s.t, Ambition, Avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the Mother of Ignorance and Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all that know not this happiness."

=Herbert, George=. "This _book of stars_ [the Bible] lights to eternal bliss."

=Herschel, Sir J=. "Give a man this taste [for good books] and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages."

=Hillard, George S=. "Here we have immortal flowers of poetry, wet with Castilian dew, and the golden fruit of Wisdom that had long ripened on the bough.... We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pa.s.s an evening with Shakspeare or Bacon.... We may be sure that Shakspeare never out-talked his 'Hamlet,' nor Bacon his 'Essays.'... To the gentle hearted youth, far from his home, in the midst of a pitiless city, 'homeless among a thousand homes,' the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. The hours from sunset to bedtime are his hours of peril. Let me say to such young men that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless."

=Holmes, O. W=. "Books are the 'negative' pictures of thought; and the more sensitive the mind that receives the images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced."

=Houghton, Lord=. "It [a book] is a portion of the eternal mind, caught in its process through the world, stamped in an instant, and preserved for eternity."

=Irving=. "The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity."

=Johnson, Dr=. "No man should consider so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them."

=Jonson, Ben=. "A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes."

=King, Thomas Starr=. "By cultivating an interest in a few good books, which contain the result of the toil or the quintessence of the genius of some of the most gifted thinkers of the world, we need not live on the marsh and in the mists; the slopes and the summits invite us."

=Kingsley, Charles=. "Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!--a message to us from the dead, from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as to brothers."

=Lamb, Charles=. "Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listens had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears."

=Landor, Walter Savage=. "The writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander."

=Langford=. "Strong as man and tender as woman, they welcome you in every mood, and never turn from you in distress."

=Lowell=. "Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key that admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination, to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time?... One is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him."

=Luther=. "To read many books produceth confusion, rather than learning, like as those who dwell everywhere are not anywhere at home."

=Lyly, John=. "Far more seemly were it ... to have thy study full of books than thy purse full of money."

=Lytton, Lord=.

"Laws die, books never."

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword."

"Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe."