“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”

“It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

“Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”

“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”

“when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.”

“Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”