Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves.
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt,
If one be better with them or without,—
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
'Tis wise to learn; 'tis God-like to create!
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow.
Titus Andronicus. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 34.
A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.
R. B. Sheridan—The Rivals. Act I. Sc. 2.
Shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.
Bayard Taylor—The Poet's Journal. Third
Evening.
Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe
Where every book is thy epitaph.
Henry Vaughan. On Sir Thomas Bodley's Library.
LIES (See Lying)
LIFE
I expect to pass through this world but once.
Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let
me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for
I shall not pass this way again.
Author unknown. Genoral proof lies with
Stephen Grellet as author. Not found
in his writings. Same idea found in The
Spectator. (Addison.) No. I. Vol. I.
March i. 1710. Canon Jepson positively
claimed it for Emerson. Attributed to Edward Courtenay, due to the resemblance of the Earl's epitaph. See Literary World, March 15, 1905. Also to Carlyle, Miss A. B. Hageman, Rowland Hill, Marcus Aubelius.
If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.
Abu'l Ala.
| seealso = (See also {{sc|Bacchyltdes, Vauvenakques)
Spesso 6 da forte,
Piu che il morire, il vivere.
Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather
to live than to die.
Alfteri—Oreste. IV. 2.
I know not if the dark or bright
Shall be my lot;
If that wherein my hopes delight
Be best or not.
Henry M. Alfort>—Life's Answer.
Every man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's
fingers.
Hans Christian Andersen—Preface to Works.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save
A life which valour could not, from the grave.
A better buckler I can soon regain,
But who can get another life again?
Archilochus—See Plutarch's Morals. Vol.
I. Essay on the Laws, etc., of the Lacedemonians.
There is a cropping-time in the races of men,
as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the
stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession of splendid men; and then comes a period
of barrenness.
Aristotle—Rhetoric. 11. 15. Par. III.
Quoted by Bishop Feaser. Sermon. Feb.
9, 1879.
We are the voices of the wandering wind,
Which moan for rest and rest can never find;
Lo! as the wind is so is mortal life,
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia.
Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep
Wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,
Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all
Where pity is, for pity makes the world
Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.
Matthew Arnold—Morality. St. 2.
Saw life steadily and saw it whole.
