In my youth I never entered a great library but my predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of mind--not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I shall be summoned away.--DE QUINCEY, _Letter to a young man_. A man may be judged by his library.--BENTHAM. I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a temple.--EVELYN, _to Wotton_. 'Father, I should like to learn to make gold.' 'And what would'st thou do if thou could'st make it?' 'Why, I would build a great house and fill it with books.'--SOUTHEY, _Doctor_. What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the indispensable requisites of life. Books? That is one of them, and I have more than I can use.--DAVID HUME, _Burton's 'Life_.' Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, and says, 'Please to walk in, Sir.'--SOUTHEY, _Life_. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.--MACAULAY. Our books ... do not our hearts hug them, and quiet themselves in them even more than in God?--BAXTER'S _Saint's Rest_. It is our duty to live among books.--NEWMAN, _Tracts for the Times, No. 2_. What lovely things books are!--BUCKLE, _Life by Huth_. (Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations be not found in books?--BERKELEY, _Querist_. Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.--SHAFTESBURY, _Characteristics_. It's mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay or your volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.--O. W. HOLMES, _Poet at the Breakfast Table_. I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny--'nullum esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prodesset.'--GIBBON, _Autobiography_. A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.--BYRON, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.