The Choice of BooksAmerican Book Exchange, 1881 - 94 páginas |
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Términos y frases comunes
advantage Alonzo Potter amusement bad books beauty become better BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE Bronson Alcott chapter choice of books cholies course cultivation culture desire dictionaries duty Emerson English evil feel George Eliot give Goethe Greek habit of reading Hamerton Herbert Spencer Herodotus Homer human intel intellectual intelligent knowledge labor language Library Journal literary literature living look Lord Lytton matter Matthew Arnold means memory mental Milton mind natural never newspaper note-book one's ourselves paper person Petrarch Philip Gilbert Hamerton poems poetry poets President Porter profit public libraries purpose reader reading aloud reading habit remember says selection of books sense Shakespeare skip society soul speak spirit Tacitus taste teacher tell things thought tion translations true truth volumes wasted whole wise words writer young Zoilus
Pasajes populares
Página 56 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Página 14 - For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. There are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time.
Página 15 - But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him ; — this the piece of true knowledge, or...
Página 12 - No matter how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and...
Página 12 - Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history — with the wisest, the wittiest — with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations — a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.
Página 88 - Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
Página 14 - ... possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use, if we allow them to usurp the place of true books : for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print.
Página 88 - Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth!
Página 88 - In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
Página 14 - The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and weather, last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a 'book' at all, nor, in the real sense, to be read.