“You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.”

“When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue. You give him the possibility of a whole new life.”

“Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.”

“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”

“I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book - that one book every writer carries within him - the image of his own soul.”

“His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk.”