“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

“The flesh of animals who feed excursively is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?”

“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”

“Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. When men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right virtue. The devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in angel's clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on the whole much more trustworthy guide.”

“Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. ”

“Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.”