“Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.”

“Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.”

“The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.”

“Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it”

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. ”

“I wish there could be an international peaceconference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my ownconviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in nosmall measure on them and on the librarians. ”

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”