We enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed.
A borrowed book is like a guest in the house;
it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality.
You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof.
But your own books belong to you;
you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality.
Books are for use, not for show;
you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up,
or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down.
A good reason for marking favorite passages in books
is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings,
to refer to them quickly, and then in later years,
it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail.
Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth;
the instinct of private property can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils.
The best of mural decorations is books;
they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper,
they are more attractive in design,
and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities,
so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight,
you are surrounded with intimate friends.
The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing.
Books are of the people, by the people, for the people.
Literature is the immortal part of history;
it is the best and most enduring part of personality.
Book-friends have this advantage over living friends;
you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it.
The great dead are beyond our physical reach,
and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible.
But in a private library,
you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens.
And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best.
They laid themselves out, they did their ultimate best to entertain you,
to make a favorable impression.
You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor;
only instead of seeing them masked,
you look into their innermost heart of heart.
英文睡前故事 第38集:Happy Birthday Winnie
英文睡前故事 第46集:Library Lion
英文睡前故事 第73集:Tappity Tap What Was That
英文睡前故事 第61集:Polly Jean Pyjama Queen
英文睡前故事 第33集:G.E.M.
英文睡前故事 第71集:Super Daisy and the Peril of Planet Red Fox
英文睡前故事 第47集:Look Out Stripey Horse
英文睡前故事 第16集:The Magic Cutlass
英文睡前故事 第68集:Small Knight and George
英文睡前故事 第62集:Princess Smartypants Breaks the Rules
英文睡前故事 第56集:Once There Was a House
英文睡前故事 第79集:The Blackest Hole in Space
英文睡前故事 第81集:The Cow That Laid an Egg
英文睡前故事 第35集:Goodnight Magic Moon
英文睡前故事 第26集:Eat Your Peas
英文睡前故事 第48集:Magic Sky
英文睡前故事 第34集:Giggle Giggle Quack
英文睡前故事 第32集:Follow the Swallow
英文睡前故事 第53集:Mungo and the Dinosaur Island
英文睡前故事 第80集:The Bog Baby
英文睡前故事 第18集:Click Clack Moo Cows That Type
英文睡前故事 第69集:Small Mouse Big City
英文睡前故事 第45集:Lazarus the Ladybird
英文睡前故事 第57集:Penguin Post
英文睡前故事 第27集:Eliza and the Moonchild
英文睡前故事 第82集: The Dragon Festival
英文睡前故事 第25集:Dont Read This Book
英文睡前故事 第74集:Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go to Bed
英文睡前故事 第55集:Nobody Laughs at a Lion
英文睡前故事 第37集:Guess What I Found in Dragon Wood