There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.
I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.
If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.
When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
