“From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.”

“There are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciousness and seem to disappear without leaving a trace. And then one day we find, in some summing-up of our life and put attitudes towards experience, that their influence has been enormous.”

“The sum of the inner movements which a man finds easy and as a consequence performs gracefully and with pleasure, one calls his soul; if these inner movements are plainly difficult and an effort for him, he is considered soulless.”

“Stray birds of the summer come to my window to sing and fly away.And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.O TROUPE of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words . . . ”

“Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space in a single house or single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books.”

“I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts.”