Saturday, August 6, 2011

Live with more books than you read

Quotation of the Day

Good Advice: Live with More Books than You Read

"He should live with more books than he reads, with a penumbra of unread pages, of which he knows the general character and content, fluttering round him. This is the purpose of libraries.... It is also the purpose of good bookshops, both new and secondhand, of which there are still some, and would that there were more. A bookshop is not like a railway booking-office which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye.

"To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon's entertainment. Feel no shyness or compunction in taking it. Bookshops exist to provide it; and the booksellers welcome it, knowing how it will end."
--Economist John Maynard Keynes, as quoted in a Canberra Times piece headlined "Bookshops about more than just purchasing

2 comments:

  1. I've read every single book I own and I own hundreds. Some I've read once, some twice and some are on the Bi-annual reading list.

    Apart from the odd Chick Lit ones, I'm never parting with any of them. DD will either bury them with me or, heaven forbid, burn them.

    That reminds me. Must restart the Margaret Howard series.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooooh! I want pages fluttering around me. That a great quote.

    ReplyDelete

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