“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight”

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

“This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.”

“Man reading ought to be a man intensely alive. The book ought to be a ball of light in his hands. ”

“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”

“My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration.”