It always receives us with the same kindness; amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book--just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which both entertain for a third.

There is an old proverb, "Love me, love my dog." But there is more wisdom in this: "Love me, love my book." The book is a truer and higher bond of union.

Men can think, feel, and sympathise with each other through their favourite author.
They live in him together, and he in them.
"Books," said Hazlitt, "wind into the heart; the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood.

We read them when young, we remember them when old.

We read there of what has happened to others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves.