Augustine Birrell

"That great dust-heap called ‘history’."

"A great library easily begets affection, which may deepen into love."

"It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action."

"Great is bookishness and the charm of books."

"Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! […] By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done comparatively little mischief."

"Personally, I am dead against the burning of books."

"There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven."

"There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector."

"It can never be wrong to give pleasure."

"We do not get many glimpses of Bodleys habits of life or ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we learn from a correspondent, hasty to write but when the posts do urge him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure breed him opportunity. Words are women, deeds are men, is another saying of his which I reprint without comment."