No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach

Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any more farewells, which are upon human lips, of all words, the most natural, and of all the most painful.

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
Piled high, packed large, — where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!