Go, litel boke! go litel myn tregedie!
O little booke, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thyself in prees for dred?
And as for me, though than I konne but lyte,
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that ther is game noon,
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,
But yt be seldome on the holy day.
Save, certeynly, when that the monthe of May
Is comen, and that I here the foules synge,
And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge,
Farwel my boke, and my devocion.
It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.
Books should, not Business, entertain the Light;
And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.
Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not evercraving jor their fe$L»
Crabbe—The Borough. * "Letter jtXIV.
Schools. L. 402.
The monument of vanished mindes.
Sir Wu. Davenant—Gondibert.
| place = Bk. II.
Canto V.
Give me a book that does my soul embrace
And makes simplicity a grace—
Language freely flowing, thoughts as free—
Such pleasing books more taketh me
Than all the modern works of art
That please mine eyes and not my heart.
Margaret Denbo. Suggested by
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace.
Ben Jonson—Silent Woman. Act 1. Sc. 1.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
Sir John Denham—Of Prudence.
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul.
| author = Emily Dickinson
| work = A Book.
Golden volumes! richest treasures,
Objects of delicious pleasures!
You my eyes rejoicing please,
You my hands in rapture seize!
Brilliant wits and musing sages,
Lights who beam'd through many ages!
Left to your conscious leaves their story,
And dared to trust you with their glory;
And now their hope of fame achiev'd,
Dear volumes! you have not deceived!
Homo unius libri, or, cave ab homine unius libri.
Beware of the man of one book.
Isaac D'Israeli, quoted in Curiosities of Literature.
| seealso = (See also Aquinas)
| topic = Books
| page =
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num = 14
| text = <poem>Not as ours the books of old—
Things that steam can stamp and fold;
Not as ours the books of yore—
Rows of type, and nothing more.
The spectacles of books.
Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst.
In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views.
There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our
stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
