I give thee what is most my own - A Dedication by Francis William Bourdillon

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams.

Because there are these books that I have and I have them as a gift for you: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers and also the Bible. These guarantee my freedom and yours and our children’s to breathe oxygen,

They are my slaves [ books and papers ] and they must serve me as I please.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died.

I put a New Testament among your books, for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child; because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world, and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by this book, putting aside the interpretations and inventions of men.

"Because there are these books that I have and I have them as a gift for you: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers and also the Bible," she noted. "These guarantee my freedom and yours and our children’s to breathe oxygen.

"My books are friends that never fail me."

(Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle; 17 March 1817)

When you come, bring...the books, and above all the parchments. (2 Timothy 4:13)

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
'His sins were scarlet, But his books were read'.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.

I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information.