There are books which are of that importance in a man's private
experience, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius Agrippa, of
Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of Thrace,--books which take rank
in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so
medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative,--books
which are the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so
nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, though one shuts them
with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of
living.
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the
wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries,
in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their
learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible,
solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the
thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written
out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.--R. W.
EMERSON. _Books._
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their
sterling and intrinsic merit.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._