But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered. As I read, I began to call them together again and, as it were, laid a bait for my soul

room without books is like a body without a soul.

A room without books is like a body without soul.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

Without books, I would certainly die.

Un hogar sin libros es como un cuerpo sin alma.

Take my books away, and I should be desperate!

I believe, unless I had a new book, I was never happy.

When I didn't have friends, I had books.

A life without books is unlivable

My thoughts were full of other things When I wandered off the path.

Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,—alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man.

I read, I daydreamed, I wandered the city so ardently in part because it was a means of wandering in my thoughts, and my thoughts were runaways, constantly taking me away in the midst of the conversation, the meal, the class, the work, the play, the dance, the party. They were a place I wanted to be, thinking, musing, analyzing, imagining, hoping, tracing connections, integrating new ideas, but they grabbed me and ran with me from the situations at hand over and over. I disappeared in the middle of conversations, sometimes because I was bored but just as often because someone said something so interesting that my mind chased after the idea they offered and lost track of the rest of what they said. I lived in a long reverie for years, went days without much interruption to it, which was one of the gifts of solitude.