Bookish quotations

In my recent reading I have come across a couple of book related
quotations which may be of interest.

from Robertson Davies- "The Tabletalk of Samuel Marchbanks"
After remarking on the post-war reappearance of catalogues from British
booksellers-
"Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look
at or handle. They hav no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze
people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away
in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting
his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book-collector
is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a
miser."

from Jan Morris "Manhattan, 45"

on, e.g. Knopf and Harper's "They produced beautiful books on thick
expensive paper, printed in grand old typefaces with ink of a particularly
American, or to imaginative bibliophiles even a particularly Manhattan
smell. 2
"2 Bibliophiles like me: there are books I bought more than thirty
years ago which can still, by a single sniff of their pages, transport me
instantly over the ocean to New York. Books don't smell like that
anymore."

Matthew Hill

Another one from Davies, which I have framed on my library wall:

She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast
like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful
acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than
most people suppose. 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.
Solly was in a measure a victim of this unscrupulous passion, but Freddy was
wholly in the grip of it.

--Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited,
1951), Ch. 6.

Now back to lurking.

Phred

"M Hill" wrote in message
...
In my recent reading I have come across a couple of book related
quotations which may be of interest.

from Robertson Davies- "The Tabletalk of Samuel Marchbanks"
After remarking on the post-war reappearance of catalogues from British
booksellers-
"Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look
at or handle. They hav no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze
people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away
in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting
his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book-collector
is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a
miser."

from Jan Morris "Manhattan, 45"

on, e.g. Knopf and Harper's "They produced beautiful books on thick
expensive paper, printed in grand old typefaces with ink of a particularly
American, or to imaginative bibliophiles even a particularly Manhattan
smell. 2
"2 Bibliophiles like me: there are books I bought more than thirty
years ago which can still, by a single sniff of their pages, transport me
instantly over the ocean to New York. Books don't smell like that
anymore."

Matthew Hill