"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...












Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
More Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
"Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.
"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
"Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
"Books are for nothing but to inspire
"There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so autho...
"Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious t...
"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
"Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it no excess of explanation and it is full of suggestions the raw material of possi...
"In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calami...
"Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly m...