That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit. – Amos Bronson Alcott

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. – George Robert Gissing

Catalogues of imaginary libraries are an obscure but fruitful area of collecting. The tradition of imaginary books, which exist only within other books, goes back at least to Rabelais, who invented a list of book titles for the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Gargantua and Pantagruel (c.1532). – Emi Hastings, “Catalogues of Imaginary Libraries,” 2014

There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marxs Capital. – W. E. B. Du Bois