"What a blessing it is to love books."

"What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden."

"Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them."

"She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump."