“Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.-from the Prefatory”

“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

“I don't know anything that mars a good literature so completely as too much truth. Facts contain a great deal of poetry, but you can't use too many of them without damaging your literature.”

“All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.”

“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.”

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

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”