Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My pile of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Quotations about:
collector
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Your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) Welsh-English essayist
“The Two Races of Men,” Essays of Elia (1823)
To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1985)
Most collectors of verses and sayings proceed as though they were eating cherries and oysters, choosing the best first, and ending by eating them all.
[La plupart des faiseurs de recueils de vers ou de bons mots ressemblent à ceux qui mangent des cerises ou des huitres, choisissant d’abord les meilleurs, et finissant par tout manger.]
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 1, ¶ 2 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
[tr. Mathers (1926)]The majority of compilers of verse and sayings are like eaters of cherries and oysters, who pick out the best first and end by eating all.
[tr. Pearson (1973)]Most authors of collections of poetry or epigrams proceed as though they were eating cherries or oysters. They start out by selecting the best, but wind up swallowing everything.
[tr. Dusinberre (1992)]Most compilers of anthologies of poetry or of epigrams are like people eating cherries or oysters: they start by picking out the best and easting the lot.
[tr. Parmée (2003), ¶ 3]Most compilers of verse or of bon mots resemble people who eat cherries or oysters, at first choosing the best ones, and finishing by eating everything.
[tr. Sinicalchi]
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.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
Tempest-Tost, ch. 6 (1951)