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Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed ...more

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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

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The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

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Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of a...more

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One thinks of nothing,’ he continued; ‘the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blinding with the fictio...more

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For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

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You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in t...more