When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge.

  An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after knowledge.

  It is only knowledge, which worne with yeares waxeth young, and when all things are cut away with the Cicle of Time, knowledge flourisheth so high that Time cannot reach it.

  He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.

  Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

  The improvement of the understanding is for two ends: first, for our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver and make out that knowledge to others.

  Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

  The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend: when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

  A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

  The philosopher is the lover of wisdom and truth; to be a sage, is to avoid the senseless and the depraved. The philosopher therefore should live only among philosophers.

  Some will only read old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: while others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than the author: others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by which the most ingenius author may be injured by the most impertinent reader.

  Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.

  What a place to be in is an old library. It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage, and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

  We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.

  One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.

  The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process.

  The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us.

  Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark gray town?… O, they do greatly err who think that the stars are all the poetry which cities have; and therefore that the poet’s only dwelling should be in sylvan solitudes, under the green roof of trees.

  Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

  Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.

  What a wonderful,—what an almost magical boon, a writer of great genius confers upon us, when we read him intelligently. As he proceeds from point to point in his argument or narrative, we seem to be taken up by him, and carried from hill-top to hill-top, where, through an atmosphere of light, we survey a glorious region of thought, looking freely, far and wide, above and below, and gazing in admiration upon all the beauty and grandeur of the scene.

  I look upon a library as a kind of mental chemist’s shop, filled with the crystals of all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought with local circumstances or universal principles.

  The literature of any age is but the mirror of its prevalent tendencies.

  Letters are the fetters of language, even if they are its golden fetters…. Literature, therefore, whatever the etymology of the term may seem to indicate, has no essential connection with letters. And its connection even with language, which is essential, is still no more than such a connection as is created by the fact that literature consists necessarily of words. It is of thought and emotion transformed into or manifested in language that the fabric of literature is woven. But literature is not, like language, a necessary product of our humanity. Man has been nowhere found without a language: there have been and are many nations and races without a literature. A language is to a people a necessary of existence; a literature is only a luxury. Hence it sometimes happens that the origin of a nation’s literature, and the influences which have inspired and moulded it, have been more or less distinct from the sources whence the language has taken its beginning and the inner operating spirit or external circumstances which have modified its shape and character. The literature will generally be acted upon by the language, and the language by the literature; but each may have also had fountains of its own at which the other has not drunk.

  In science, read by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

  A library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a man may take counsel with all that have been wise and great and good and glorious amongst the men that have gone before him.

  The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is but little.

  As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smooths a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening is character too.

  The literature of a nation is the embodiment of that which is most artistic and complete in its intellectual, literary life. There are many practical products of composition, records, chronicles, works of instruction, of science, and of reference, which contain the material of knowledge, the raw staple of art, but are not literature. These change with succeeding years, and reappear in altered and enlarged forms, as the progress of events and investigation determine. Many books, in each generation, are the seed which is returned to the soil as the condition of farther increase. No work is a part of national literature, in its more specific sense, till it is possessed of such merit of execution, aside from mere matter, or it were better to say in conjunction with matter, as to give it permanent value. Thought alone, the substance of wisdom merely, cannot save a work to literature. It may be rather the occasion of its speedy disappearance. More skilful laborers will swarm around the sweet morsel, let fall as it were in the highway of thought, and each bear off a portion of the unidentified product. It is some completeness, symmetry, excellence of form that gives identity, ownership to a product; and a permanent interest in its careful, exact preservation.

  As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book or a friend, or, best of all, in your own thoughts—the eternal thought speaking in your thought.

  To be able to write! Throughout Mr. Ogilvy’s life, save when he was about one and twenty, this had seemed the great thing, and he ever approached the thought reverently, as if it were a maid of more than mortal purity. And it is, and because he knew this she let him see her face, which shall ever be hidden from those who look not for the soul, and to help him nearer to her came assistance in strange guise, the loss of loved ones, dolour unutterable…. Once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is literature.

  Literature, especially poetry, may be appreciated simply as art, and without any reference to the human society in which it is produced. But in that case much of its significance and interest is lost, for everything that is written is addressed to contemporaries, and the author himself, if not entirely the product of social conditions, is at least molded by them. The historic method of study is the true one, unless in a blind study of surroundings the fact that literary productions are primarily creations of the art impulse is entirely lost sight of, in which case, indeed, the study of literature might be reduced to barren classifications of facts.