Books
By Anonymous
Many of the finer things are to be found in books if we profit
by the opinions of learned people. The following expresses the
estimate of a few writers as to value of books:
Channing said: God be thanked for books. They are the voices
of the distant and the dead, and make us heir of the spiritual life
of the past ages. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us
our most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
Carlyle said: All that mankind has done, thought or been, is
lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
They are the chosen possession of men.
Emerson said: Give me a book, health, and a June day, and
I will make the pomp of kings look ridiculous.
Philip Brooks thought that four kinds of books should be in every
library. Memoirs, biography, portraits and letters – Good books
cost you little in money, but they may cost you years and decades
of toil and labor and energy if permitted to pass through life without
knowing the finer ideal of life revealed in books.