“The proper study of mankind is books.”

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: p>The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political economy, are insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman,— Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with a mild sympathy, such as suits the patient student of human error, willing to be interested in what he cannot understand. Still more rarely, owing to some revival of archaic instincts, he rediscovers the woman. This is perhaps the mark of the artist alone, and his solitary privilege. The rest of us cannot feel; we can only study. The proper study of mankind is woman, and, by common agreement since the time of Adam, it is the most complex and arduous. The study of Our Lady, as shown by the art of Chartres, leads directly back to Eve, and lays bare the whole subject of sex.If it were worthwhile to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world.</p

Vol. II, Ch. V Aphorisms and Extracts, p. 77.
Memoirs and Correspondence (1900)

Haiku in English'. Charles E. Tuttle 1967

"Books and Men" in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1901).

No. 166 (10 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Context: Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Source: Chains

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 6, To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin’

Letter VI
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)