“Value all books in proportion as they are agreeable to Scripture. Those that are nearest to it are the best, and those that are farthest from it, and most contrary to it, are the worst.”

“Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

“Therapist’s dilemma: those who need help the most, run the farthest from it.”

Jonathan Kellerman (1949) novelist, psychologist

“It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

“To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

“Though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer