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Tag Tag Books
If you cannot read them [books], at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
Winston Churchill Painting as a Pastime · 1948

Quotes

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Books, 1870 · Primary source

“I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go there without renewing the conviction that the best of it all is already within the four walls of my study at home.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Books, 1870 · Primary source

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”

Helen Keller · The Story of My Life, 1903 · Primary source

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my bookfriends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their large loves and heavenly charities.”

Helen Keller · The Story of My Life, 1903 · Primary source

Works

Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1870
Books

An examination of reading and literary judgement, arguing for selective attention to enduring books, independent thought and active engagement with authors.

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Related Tags

Reading 14 Curiosity 19 Libraries 3 Self-education 5 Intellectual independence 3 Inspiration 3 Self-reliance 48 Authors 1 Cultural memory 1 Literary judgement 2 Selective reading 1 Personal library 1 Cultural inheritance 1 Knowledge 16 Classical literature 1 Intellectual growth 4 Personal transformation 1 Attention 11 Interpretation 2 Intellectual discipline 2 Shakespeare 1 Literary appreciation 1 Accessibility 1 Inclusion 1 Intellectual freedom 5 Independent thought 8 Classics 1