Common sense is as rare as genius.

I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Everything comes to him who waits but a loaned book.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

I cannot live without books.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre.<br> (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)