Nathaniel Parker Willis

“The hidden beauties of standard authors break upon the mind by surprise. It is like discovering a secret spring in an old jewel. You take up the book in an idle moment, as you have done a thousand times before, perhaps wondering, as you turn over the leaves, what the world finds in it to admire, when suddenly, as you read, your fingers press close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and the passage you have chanced upon chains you like a spell,—it is so vividly true and beautiful. Milton’s ‘Comus’ flashed upon me in this way. I never could read the ‘Rape of the Lock’ till a friend quoted some passages from it during a walk. I know no more exquisite sensation than this warming of the heart to an old author; and it seems to me that the most delicious portion of intellectual existence is the brief period in which, one by one, the great minds of old are admitted with all their time-mellowed worth to the affections.”
― Nathaniel Parker Willis