“A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. ”

“The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.”

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”

“Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows.”

“A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a man's possessions. A library is not a luxury. It is one of the necessities of a full life.”

“There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.”

“The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.”