Bibliomania Quotes

“To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.”
― Carlos María Domínguez, The House of Paper

“Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-seeker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without — who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? — and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.

And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to me that when in a railway train I have become aware that fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the problem is formidable.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories: Volume 4

“It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.”
― Robin McKinley, Imaginary Lands

“In an established love of reading there is a policy of insurance guaranteeing certain happiness till death.”
― A. Edward Newton, End Papers: Literary Recreations

“Buy books, then, that you have read with profit and pleasure and hope to read and reread. Buy books that you may underscore passages and write upon the margins, thus assuring yourself that the book is your own. Keep the books that mean the most to you close at hand, one or two, if possible, on a table at your bedside. Do not hide away your favorite books or keep them locked in enclosed shelves. Do not keep them under glass.”
― Burton Rascoe, The Joys of Reading: Life's Greatest Pleasure

“O my darling books…how dear to me are they all! For have I not chosen them one by one, gathered them in with the sweat of my brow? I do love you all! It seems as if, by long and sweet companionship, you had become part of myself.”
― Antoine Issac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy

“Well, I've always read in bed, in early years by candlelight, succeeded by lamplight, gaslight, and now electric light, and I'll probably be found dead there with some ponderous tome or book of poems on my chest and a seraphic smile of peace and contentment smoothing out all the ugliness of my visage...”
― E. Norman Torry, Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books

“In 1748, the Earl of Chesterfield passed on some useful advice to his son:
'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads; for they may profit of the former. But take care not to understand editions and title-pages too well. It always smells of pedantry and not always of learning. What curious books I have, they are indeed but few... Beware of the Bibliomania.”
― Arthur der Weduwen, The Library: A Fragile History

“Of all kinds of human weaknesses, the craze for collecting old books is the most excusable. During the early phases of the disease, the book-lover is content to purchase only books which he [sic] reads. Next he buys books which he means to read; and as his store accumulates, he hopes to read his purchases; but by-and-by he takes home books in beautiful bindings and of early date, but printed in extinct languages he cannot read.”
― Robert Milne Williamson, Bits from an Old Book Shop

“Here's a remarkable book! What a wonderful book!" he was exclaiming.


These ejaculations brought to my mind the fact that my uncle was liable to occasional fits of bibliomania; but no old book had any value in his eyes unless it had the virtue of being nowhere else to be found, or, at any rate, of being illegible.”
― Jules Verne, Journey Into The Interior Of The Earth Volume 1 Of 2

“A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more select company than all the drawing-rooms of Europe, America, and South Africa.”
― E. Norman Torry, Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books

“We believed in this country in the existence of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and risked everything on it.”
― Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books

“C’è una antica tradizione che percorre per secoli la cultura europea e insegna a rafforzare la memoria, a usarla in modo creativo, a costruire nella mente palazzi, giardini, intere biblioteche: è la tradizione dell’arte della memoria. Ad essa è dedicata la seconda aiola del nostro giardino. Troviamo qui alcuni esempi europei, come Giulio Camillo, o Opicinus de Canistris, autore di mostruose mappe profetiche del mondo, o i francescani che nel Seicento pubblicano straordinari libri illustrati che delineano le architetture del sapere. Ma vediamo anche come l’arte della memoria operi ben al di là dei confini europei, ad esempio tra gli sciamani, e in forme diverse anche ai nostri giorni, nell’esperienza dei mnemonisti, nei progetti utopici dei palazzi enciclopedici, o nelle sperimentazioni artistiche.
Al di là della tradizionale divisione tra parole e immagini l’arte della memoria insegnava a tradurre le parole in immagini, e le immagini in parole. Ci può dunque fare da tramite alla nostra terza aiola, dedicata appunto a parole e immagini. Si tratta, come si vede dagli esempi scelti, di un mondo vastissimo, in cui incontriamo le più diverse tipologie: dai ritratti, alle imprese, al gioco delle sorti che diventa anche un “giardino di pensieri”, all’iconologia, ai bestiari, alle storie e ai personaggi della letteratura medievale dipinti sui muri. E ancora incontriamo il gusto collezionistico di un grande letterato come Pietro Bembo, la fortuna figurativa di Dante e di Ariosto, le misteriose immagini alchemiche, la loro storia, le loro trasformazioni. E vediamo come i poeti creano il mito di Raffaello nella Roma di Leone X.
Nello stesso tempo leggiamo come questo mondo in fermento gioca gran parte nella autobiografia di un grande storico dell’arte come Michael Baxandall, e nella storia londinese del mitico istituto Warburg. Parole e immagini entrano poi in gioco nella riflessione sulla anachronic Renaissance, sui complessi rapporti con le diverse facce del tempo che un’opera può testimoniare.
Un invito a varcare i tradizionali confini ci viene proposto anche dal percorso della nostra ultima aiola, dove, accanto ai classici, alle grandi figure consacrate dal canone, troviamo viaggiatori, predicatori, mistiche, poetesse a lungo dimenticate, scritti dalla linea del fronte della Prima guerra mondiale, e tanto altro ancora che lasciamo scoprire a chi si avventurerà nella lettura.
Abbiamo provato a delineare un giardino con le sue aiole, ma naturalmente le aiole non segnano confini rigidi, si aprono piuttosto su molti sentieri che le legano fra di loro costruendo una rete che via via affiora.

Lina Bolzoni (Introduzione)”
― Lina Bolzoni, Nel giardino dei libri

“Save trees, buy ebooks.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Ebooks are to print books what EVs are to gas vehicles.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World