When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

What better place to kill time than a library?

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

I love my own kind—womankind.

It’s all inside of you—what you want, who you are, and who you want to be. Just give it time.” He pulls away and helps me to my feet. “Nobody makes you, you. You make yourself.

As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character.

We all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.

God's presence is not just Light, and Life, but Love. And Love invites, but does not compel.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

Poetical appreciation is only newly bursting on me.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

The best education for the best is the best education for all.