It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoug… - William Ellery Channing

God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.

There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.

Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, ... I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.