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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. It is true, no age can restore a life whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.

558

Milton: Areopagitica.

Books are our most steadfast friends: they are our resource in loneliness; they go with us on our journeys; they await our return; they are our best company; they are a refuge in pain; they breathe peace upon our troubles; they await age as ministers of youth and cheer; they bring the whole world of men and things to our feet; they put us in the centre of the world; they summon us away from our narrow life to their greatness, from our ignorance to their wisdom, from our partial or distempered vision to their calin and universal verdicts. There may be something of discord in their mingled voices, but the undertone speaks for truth and virtue and faith. Theodore Thornton Munger: On the Threshold. VII. Reading.

559

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading: every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too. It sails the ocean, driven by the winds of heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes, leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship goes on. And what treasures it brings to every land, scattering the seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet to come. 560 Theodore Parker: Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Men.

There is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you.

561

Love Peacock: Crotchet Castle.
Sleeping Venus.

Ch. 7. The

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

562 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching. Books form a universal republic, a union of nations, or a society of Jesus, in a nobler sense, or a humane society, whereby a second or duplicate Europe arises, which, like London, lies in several counties and districts. As now, on the one side, the book-pollen flying everywhere brings the disadvantage that no people can any longer produce a bed of flowers true and unspotted with foreign colors; as now no state can be any longer formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself, but, like an Indian idol composed of different animals, must see the various members of the neighboring states mingled with its growth; so, on the other side, through the Ecumenic Council of the book world, the spirit of a provincial assembly can no longer slavishly enchain its people, and an invisible church frees it from the visible one.

563

Richter: Levana. Frag. i. Ch. 3. Importance of
Education.

No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read and re-read, and loved, and loved again, and marked so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory.

564 Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies. Of Kings' Treasures. Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnished me with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

565

Shakespeare: The Tempest. Act i. Sc. 2. O sir, we quarrel in print by the book, as you have books for good manners.

566

Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act v. Sc. 4. Books are a finer world within the world.

567 Alexander Smith: Dreamthorp. Men of Letters. Of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature: they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. 568

Robert Louis Stevenson: Books Which Have
Influenced Me.

Books, like men, their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world; but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

569 Swift: A Tale of a Tub. The Epistle. Dedicatory. For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that, instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are, sweetness and light.

570 Swift The Battle of the Books. The Spider and the Bee.

That which, by a universal range, with a iong search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax.

571 Swift: The Battle of the Books. The Spider and the Bee.

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed. 572 Sir William Temple: Ancient and Modern Learning. Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is, that it be readable. 573

Anthony Trollope: Autobiography. Ch. 19.

A small number of choice books are sufficient.
574 Voltaire: A Philosophical Dictionary. Books. Sec. 1.
Books are made from books.

575 Voltaire: A Philosophical Dictionary. Books. Sec.1. It is with books as with men, a very small number play a great part; the rest are confounded with the multitude.

576 Voltaire : A Philosophical Dictionary. Books. Sec. 1. You despise books, you whose whole lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure, or in indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

577 Voltaire: A Philosophical Dictionary. Books. Sec. 1. Good books are the most precious of blessings to a people; bad books are among the worst of curses.

578 E. P. Whipple: Essays and Reviews.

Rascality.

Romance of

Precious and priceless are the blessings which books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most sublime and enchanting regions.

579 E. P. Whipple: Literature and Life. Authors in their Relations to Life.

They are for company the best friends in doubts counsellors, in damps comforters, times prospective, the home travellers ship or horse, the busy mans best recreation, the opiate of idle weariness, the minds best ordinary, natures garden and seed-plot of immortality.

580 Bulstrode Whitelock: Yootamia. 1654. Books have their fate from the capacities of readers, or rather from their principles.

581 Thomas Wilson: Maxims of Piety and of Christianity.

BORES

see Laughter, Talkativeness.

Description is always a bore, both to the describer and to the describee.

582

Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Home Letters.
Letter vii.

Description is an acknowledged bore.

583

Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Home Letters.
Letter xii.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. 584 Maria Edgeworth: Thoughts on Bores. All men are bores, except when we want them. There never was but one man whom I would trust with my latchkey.

585 Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 1. We are always bored by those whom we bore.

586

La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and
Moral Maxims. Third Supplement. No. 92.

We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others. La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims. No. 141.

587

BORROWING - -see Debt, Friends.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some, for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. 588 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac.

BRAINS.

Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high.

589

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Thomas Fuller: Andronicus, ad fin. 1.

see Courage.

A brave man never dies.

590

Owen Felltham: Resolves. Pt. i. Of Fame.

A brave man inspires others to heroism, but his own courage is not diminished when it enters into other souls: it is stimulated and invigorated.

591

Washington Gladden: Things Old and New.
111. Nature and Spirit.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
592 Johnson: Letters to and from the Late Samuel John-
son. From Original MS. by Hester Lynch Piozzi,
London, 1788. II. 350. (George Birkbeck Hill,
Editor.)

Oh, that's a brave man! he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose; but all's brave that youth mounts and folly guides.

593

Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act iii. Sc. 4.

BREAD.

Here is bread, which strengthens man's heart, and therefore called the staff of life.

594

Matthew Henry: Commentaries. Psalm civ.

Bread is the staff of life.
595

BRIBERY.

Swift: A Tale of a Tub. Preface.

Flat burglary as ever was committed.

596 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 2.

BUFFOONERY.

Buffoonery is often want of wit.

597 La Bruyere: Characters. Of Society and Conversation. (Rowe, Translator.)

BURDENS.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all.mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

598

BUSINESS.

Johnson: The Idler. No. 30.

That which is everybody's business is nobody's business. 599 Izaak Walton: The Complete Angler. Pt. i. Ch. 2.

CALAMITY.

C.

Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

600 Burke: Speech, March 22, 1775. On Conciliation with America.

Calamities that seem insupportable when looked at from a distance, lose half their power if met and resisted with fortitude.

601 CALUMNY -see Perseverance, Reputation, Silence. There is nothing which travels so fast as slander; nothing is more easily sent abroad, nothing is received more rapidly, nothing is spread more extensively.

James Fenimore Cooper. Jack Tier. Ch. 8.

602

Cicero: Orations. For C. Plancius. Sec. 23. (Yonge, Translator.)

A nickname a man may chance to wear out, but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite.

603

Isaac Disraeli: Amenities of Literature.

The

First Jesuits in England.

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