Books are a narcotic

Books are a narcotic.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

You spend too much time on ephemeras. The majority of modern books are merely wavering reflections of the present. They disappear very quickly. You should read more old books. The classics. Goethe. What is merely new is the most transitory of all things. It is beautiful today, and tomorrow merely ludicrous.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.