In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library,is to look at his books. One gets the notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves. The Poet at the Breakfast Table. Letter to George Johnson, January 1824.
Books constitute capital.
A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital. Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. No place offers a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.