I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced - Joseph Conrad

Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence…

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.