Augustine Birrell quotes
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“Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1969). “Obiter Dicta: Second Series”, p.169, Library of Alexandria
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“Libraries are not made, they grow.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1899). “Collected Essays”
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“A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.”
-- Augustine Birrell -
“Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.”
-- Augustine Birrell -
“Personally, I am dead against the burning of books.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“It can never be wrong to give pleasure.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“It is the Mass that matters.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1923). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920”
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“Poetry should be vital--either stirring our blood by its divine movements or snatching our breath by its divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory, to do either is enduring fame.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1885). “Obiter Dicta ...: Carlye. On the alleged obscurity of Mr. Browning's poetry. Truth-hunting. Actors. A rogue's memoirs. The via media. Falstaff [by George Radford”
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“A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, his thoughts high, his studies intense.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1902). “Collected Essays”
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“Great is bookishness and the charm of books.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : "In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays". Book by Augustine Birrell, 1905.
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“It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“A great library easily begets affection, which may deepen into love.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1922). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”
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“I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.”
-- Augustine Birrell -
“The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1902). “Collected Essays”
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“That great dust-heap called 'history'.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Obiter Dicta "Carlyle" (1884) See Trotsky 2
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“History is a pageant and not a philosophy.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Augustine Birrell (1902). “Collected Essays”
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“Few men can afford to be angry.”
-- Augustine BirrellSource : Edmund Burke, Augustine Birrell (1945). “Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America”
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“Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.”
-- Augustine Birrell -
“Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world.”
-- Augustine Birrell -
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