Augustine Birrell Quotes

16 quotes in 168 categories

• Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.
• A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act…
• Libraries are not made, they grow.
• The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.
• That great dust-heap called 'history'.
• Is this true or only clever?
• 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…
• History is a pageant and not a philosophy.
• Few men can afford to be angry.
• Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.
• Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste,…
• Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
• 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.
• 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…
• History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy.

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