the thorns of vice being torn up by the roots, those men
attain high places of honour, and become fathers of their country, and
companions of princes, who without thee would have melted their spears
into pruning-hooks and ploughshares, or would perhaps be feeding swine
with the prodigal.

Where dost thou chiefly lie hidden, O most elect treasure! and where
shall thirsting souls discover thee?

Certes, thou hast placed thy tabernacle in books, where the Most High,
the Light of lights, the Book of Life, has established thee. There
everyone who asks receiveth thee, and everyone who seeks finds thee,
and to everyone that knocketh boldly it is speedily opened. Therein
the cherubim spread out their wings, that the intellect of the students
may ascend and look from pole to pole, from the east and west, from the
north and from the south. Therein the mighty and incomprehensible God
Himself is apprehensibly contained and worshipped; therein is revealed
the nature of things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal; therein are
discerned the laws by which every state is administered, the offices of
the celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and the tyrannies of demons
described, such as neither the ideas of Plato transcend, nor the chair
of Crato contained.

In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee
things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come
forth the laws of peace. All things are corrupted and decay in time;
Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the
glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided
mortals with the remedy of books.

Alexander, the conqueror of the earth, Julius, the invader of Rome and
of the world, who, the first in war and arts, assumed universal empire
under his single rule, faithful Fabricius and stern Cato, would now
have been unknown to fame, if the aid of books had been wanting.
Towers have been razed to the ground; cities have been overthrown;
triumphal arches have perished from decay; nor can either pope or king
find any means of more easily conferring the privilege of perpetuity
than by books. The book that he has made renders its author this
service in return, that so long as the book survives its author remains
immortal and cannot die, as Ptolemy declares in the Prologue to his
Almagest: He is not dead, he says, who has given life to science.

Who therefore will limit by anything of another kind