8 quotes
Books are the friends of solitude. They develop individuality and freedom. In solitary reading a man who is seeking himself has some chance of finding himself.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
In books may be found the recipes for manufacture of a steam-engine alongside the recipes for daily living—the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
What a teacher imparts by word of mouth is nothing in comparison with what he teaches us to get for ourselves from books.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
Just as we say “listening and hearing,” “looking and seeing,” so we ought to have two expressions to distinguish active reading from passive.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
A book exhales a subtle odor of spirituality throughout the place it adorns.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
If humanity were to lose its libraries, not only would it be deprived of certain treasures of art, certain spiritual riches, but, more important still, it would lose its recipes for living.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
The book is one of the springs of creative individualism, that individualism which, in these uncertain times, remains the guardian angel of human society. For five hundred years the book has been, for the solitary mind, an incomparable instrument of uplift and liberation.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)
If the public gets out of the habit of reading they will not come back to it. We shall enter a new phase of our history from which there is no turning back.
Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters (1937)