Ralph Waldo Emerson on Books
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“We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.”
“In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views.”
“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”
“'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.”
“There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.”