"[Milton] calls the university "A stony-hearted step-mother.""
"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."
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Source: Augustine Birrell (1923). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920”
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"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one."
"Libraries are not made, they grow."
"There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven"
"It is the Mass that matters."
"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."