A man may have great knowledge and remain uncultivated; a man may have comparatively limited knowledge and be genuinely cultivated.

There have been famous scholars who have remained crude, unripe, inharmonious in their intellectual life, and there have been men of small scholarship who have found all the fruits of culture.

The man of culture is he who has so absorbed what he knows that it is part of himself.

His knowledge has not only enriched specific faculties, it has enriched him; his entire nature has come to ripe and sound maturity.
This personal enrichment is the very highest and finest result of intimacy with books; compared with it the instruction, information, refreshment, and entertainment which books afford are of secondary importance.

The great service they render us--the greatest service that can be rendered us--is the enlargement, enrichment, and unfolding of ourselves; they nourish and develop that mysterious personality which lies behind all thought, feeling, and action; that central force within us which feeds the specific activities through which we give out ourselves to the world, and, in giving, find and recover ourselves..