31 Quotes About Collectors

Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them.

I hate people who collect things and classify things and give them names and then forget all about them. That’s what people are always doing in art. They call a painter an impressionist or a cubist or something and then they put him in a drawer and don’t see him as a living individual painter any more.

Kaohinani is a Hawaiian word meaning “gatherer of beautiful things.

Is this not the collector's exquisite pleasure, that his desire should know no bounds, should reach out into the infinite, should never know full possession which disappoints by its very completeness. O what joy to be able to postpone the fulfillment of desire to infinity!

She knew from other places she'd worked that rich people liked owning things made by different kinds of people--Africans, Eskimos, Native Americans. It didn't seem to matter what the object looked like, or to what gory purpose it might have been put, as long as it had belonged to some other people first, and as long ago as possible.

...the true collector’s only home is his own museum.

—that exquisite sensual pleasure of collectors, who are a tactile species—

The mania for collecting can easily turn simply into accumulating. All one has to do is develop one collecting interest after another, and so on. But collectors of a particular category of articles almost always lose interest once they have reached their goal. When the collection is complete, what else is there to do?...Failure makes it possible to avoid the effort: he simply carries on as before. (pp. 25-26)

I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch. I remember (the very fisrt time i met him) G.P. saying that collectors were the worst animals of all. He meant art collectors, of course. I didn't really understand, I thought he was just trying to shock Caroline - and me. But of course, he is right. They're anti-life, anti-art, anti-everything.