Orts #791
After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.
-- A.S.W. Rosenbach, Book Hunter's Holiday: Adventures with Books and Manuscripts
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
-- W.H.Auden, The Dyer's Hand
I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well . . . . If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them; I leave them there, after making one or two attacks on them. If I planted myself in them, I would lose both myself and time; for I have an impulsive mind. What I do not see at the first attack, I see less by persisting. I do nothing without gaiety; continuation and too strong contention dazes, depresses, and wearies my judgment. My sight becomes confused and dispersed.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Of books
When I pick up books, I will have perceived in such-and-such a passage surpassing charms which will have struck my soul; let me come upon it another time, in vain I turn it over and over, in vain I twist it and manipulate it, to me it is a shapeless and unrecognizable mass.
Even in my own writings I do not always find again the sense of my first thought; I do not know what I meant to say, and often I get burned by correcting and putting in a new meaning, because I have lost the first one, which was better.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Apology for Raymond Sebond
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link for those of you in the US of A: http://www.cic.gc.ca/englIsh/immigrate/index.asp