Every one who
loves books pays some day a tribute to them, expressing thankfulness
for the joy and comfort they have given. There are in them, for
everybody who will seek, wise words, good counsel, companies of great
people, fairies, friends for every day, besides wonders we never see
nor dream of in daily life.
Some of the great men have told us about their love for books; how
they have saved penny by penny slowly to buy one, or how after the
day's labor a good book and the firelight were prized above anything
else. All tell us how much they owe to books and what a blessing books
are. Imagine the number of heart-thoughts there must be in a shelf
full of good books! Thoughts in tones or thoughts in words may be of
the heart or not. But it is only when they are of the heart that they
are worthy of our time.
You will not only love books, but gain from them something of the
thoughts they contain. We might, had we time, talk of classic books,
but as we have already talked of classic music we know what the
principal thing is. It is that good thought, out of the heart, be
expressed in a scholarly way--"Great thought needs great
expression."[51] This teaches us the necessity for choosing good books
for our instruction and for our entertainment. They present beautiful
pictures to us truthfully, or they present truth to us beautifully.
And these are the first test of a written thought--its truth and its
beauty.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78