“When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.”
– Vincent Starrett, quoted in, On Conan Doyle by Michael Dirda
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“In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. All things are corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.”
– Richard de Bury, quoted in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
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I love books.
Is it entirely natural? I love my family, but that is biological and to be expected.
Books are supposed to be good for you, but are they really?
I love the search for new books. It’s almost as good as the reading.
Because I am an addict.
Do I love books, or do I depend on them? If I do, is that such a problem?
Am I going to come to great harm in my modest but unquenching hunt for the next book?
It is simple arithmetic that says that there are more books than I could ever read.
How wonderful, I can never exhaust the supply!
Book collecting is the mildest of vices, but it is still a vice nonetheless.
