From “Book hunting as a sport,” an address from James Westfall Thompson to the Caxton Club of Chicago, 1907 (published 1908). Full address here.

“It is a truism that a man is known by his friends. Show me a man’s library, and I will tell you what kind of man he is.”

“The element of chance in bookhunting invests the subject with double interest. The wondrous tale of him who found Montaigne’s own copy of Plutarch’s Lives, its pages and fly leaves scribbled over by this prince of essayists, in a bookstall along the Seine, and purchased it for a few sous, has lifted up the enthusiasm of many another less fortunate bookhunter along those quays in Paris.”

“It is not to be forgotten, however, that the quality of the reader matters more than the nature of the book. It may be the Bible or Homer or Tacitus or Shakespeare or Bacon or Montaigne or Burke or Emerson; but to be a man of one book, it is not enough that the book be great. A great author will not fill a shallow mind with ideas. Inspiration depends upon him who reads more than upon what is read.”

“Psychologically, there is doubtless a difference between a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac, … .”