It Is Lost, Lovely Child, Somewhere In

If You Are Not Happy You Had Better Stop Worrying About It And See What Treasures You Can Pluck From Your Own Brand Of Unhappiness.

Book Lovers Are Thought By Unbookish People To Be Gentle And Unworldly, And Perhaps A Few Of Them Are So. But There Are Others Who Will Lie And Scheme And Steal To Get Books As Wildly And Unconscionably As The Dope-taker In Pursuit Of His Drug. They May Not Want The Books To Read Immediately, Or At All; They Want Them To Possess, To Range On Their Shelves, To Have At Command. They Want Books As A Turk Is Thought To Want Concubines - Not To Be Hastily Deflowered, But To Be Kept At Their Master's Call, And Enjoyed More Often In Thought Than In Reality.

The Pleasures Of Love Are For Those Who Are Hopelessly Addicted To Another Living Creature. The Reasons For Such Addiction Are So Many That I Suspect They Are Never The Same In Any Two Cases. It Includes Passion But Does Not Survive By Passion; It Has Its Whiffs Of The Agreeable Vertigo Of Young Love, But It Is Stable More Often Than Dizzy; It Is A Growing, Changing Thing, And It Is Tactful Enough To Give The Addicted Parties Occasional Rests From Strong And Exhausting Feeling Of Any Kind.

Do Not Suppose, However, That I Intend To Urge A Diet Of Classics On Anybody. I Have Seen Such Diets At Work. I Have Known People Who Have Actually Read All, Or Almost All, The Guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God Save Us From Reading Nothing But The Best.

In My Experience Tact Is Usually Worse Than The Brutalities Of Truth.