If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.