Augustine Birrell Quotations

Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy.

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world.

It is the Mass the matters.

A great library easily begets affection, which may deepen into love.

Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.

Few men can afford to be angry.

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

Is this true or only clever?

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.

It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.

Great is bookishness and the charm of books.

A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, his thoughts high, his studies intense.

Poetry should be vital--either stirring our blood by its divine movements or snatching our breath by its divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory, to do either is enduring fame.

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

It can never be wrong to give pleasure.

Personally, I am dead against the burning of books.

There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector

There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven

Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

It is the Mass that matters.

I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.

Libraries are not made, they grow.

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

An ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.