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.

There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector.

There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven.

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.

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.

An 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.

Libraries are not made, they grow.

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.

It is the Mass that matters.

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.