1. “True books are filled with the power of the understanding which is the inheritance of the ages: you may take up a book in time, but you read it in eterrnity.”
2. “Books do not perish like humankind.”
3. “But don’t you understand how radical it is? The humblest person can be filled with grace. Divinity is within us, and there is no sin. There is no heaven, no hell.”
4. “I am not so foolish as to ignore the teaching of the great masters.... when they assert the following: that to be myself is to be the world, to look into myself is to look into the world, to know myself is to know the world.”
5. “I find my refuge from bleating tongues here in my library where all the ages lie silently before me.... Where is liberty to be found but in the memory and the contemplation of the past?”
6. “I leave the house and travel to the London Library in St. James Square.... I am still haunted by the fear that somewhere among these volumes will be discovered the same novel I myself am writing.”
7. “In the affairs of the world which we command, there is somewhat what is true, and somewhat what is false: so who here can tell me what is real and what is unreal?”
8. “It is true...that the imagination is immortal, and that thereby we each create our own eternity.”
9. “Once upon a time I was afraid of libraries. Those shelves of books formed a world which had, almost literally, turned its back upon me; the smell of dust and wood, and faded pages, induced in me a sense of melancholy loss. Yet I began to repair my life when I became a researcher and entered the past: then one book led to another book, one document to another document, one theme to another theme, and I was led down a sweet labyrinth of learning in which I could loose myself. It has been said that books talk to one another when no one is present to hear them speak, but I know better than that: they are forever engaged in an act of silent communion which, if we are fortunate, we can overhear. I soon came to recognize the people who also understood this. They were the ones who always relaxed as they walked among the shelves, as if they were being comforted and protected by a thousand invisible presences. They seem to be talking to themselves but, no, they are talking to the books.”
10. “Reader, nothing is set down by a fanciful hand. I viewed everything here related in broad seeing, but if my poor pen should be caused anywhere to stumble, you will consider in recompense all the unseen and unknown ways through which it has toiled and laboured.”
11. ””There is no secret,”” I replied, “unless it is the secret of the whole world in which the elements are intermingled.”
12. “There is no way to conquer time and live eternally except through vision. The vision, not the body, transcends this life.”
13. ”Time is never lost, for we make our own as we venture forward.”
14. “True books are filled with the power of the understanding which is the inheritance of the ages: you may take up a book in time, but you read it in eternity.”
15. “...what knave... can unriddle their mystery? In all affairs of the world which we command, there is somewhat that is true and somewhat that is false: so who here can tell me what is real and what is unreal?”
16. “Yet I am not so foolish as to ignore the teachings of the great masters, Pico della Mirandola and Hermes Trimegistus among them, when they assert the following: that to be myself is to be the world, to look into myself is to look into the world, to know myself is to know the world. The human form is more powerful than the sun because it contains the sun, more beautiful than the heavens because it contains the heavens, and he who sees it truly is richer than any king, for he has the entire art and understanding of the earth.”
