[BOOKS]: Pt. 2

"It is our duty to live among books."
--John Henry Newman, 1834, Tracts
for the Times, No. 2

     Nothing can supply the place of
books. They are cheering and soothing
companions in solitude, illness, affliction.
The wealth of both continents would be
no equivalent for the good they impart.
Let every man, if possible, gather some
good books under his roof, and obtain
access for himself and family to some
social library. Almost any luxury should
be sacrificed to this.
--William Ellery Channing, 1838, Self-
Culture.

     In a library we are surrounded by
many hundred of dear friends but they
are imprisoned by an enchanter in these
paper and leathern boxes.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870,
Society and Solitude

     Every book that we take up without
a purpose, is an opportunity lost of tak-
ing up a book with a purpose. It is so
certain that information, that is, the know-
ledge, the stored thoughts and observa-
tions of mankind, is now grown to pro-
portions so utterly incalculable and pro-
digious, that even the learned whose
lives are given to study, can but pick up
some crumbs that fall from the table of
truth. They delve and tend but a plot in
that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst
those whom active life leaves with but a
few cramped hours of study can hardly
come to know the very vastness of the
field before them, or how infinitesimally
small is the corner they can traverse at
the best.
--Frederic Harrison, 1879-86, The
Choice of Books.