CHAPTER XXIV.
BOOKS AND SUCCESS.
Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
-- SHAKESPEARE.
Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
-- SOCRATES.
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-- FRANKLIN.
My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India.
-- GIBBON.
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
-- FENELON.
Who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought,-- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
-- BULWER.
When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
-- WASHINGTON IRVING.
"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you in this simple Saxon?
I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night.

All the rest was task work; these were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors.

The rest were as senna to me.

These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit.