The Choice of Books

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American Book Exchange, 1881 - Books and reading - 208 pages
 

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Page 89 - ... books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
Page 70 - So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.
Page 89 - And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself — kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.
Page 12 - No matter how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and...
Page 29 - Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
Page 88 - ... are the transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed his ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which by this great invention of these latter ages may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature, Thus Cowley in his poem on the Resurrection, mentioning the destruction of the universe, has those admirable lines — " Now all the wide extended sky And all th' harmonious worlds on high, And Virgil's sacred work...
Page 78 - Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Page 14 - The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak of the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you.
Page 88 - Never slumber'd, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim: Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away.
Page 52 - And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.

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