You must have three things to be happy: something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

As regards intellectual work, it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realms of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual working in solitude. -Sigmund Freud, 1939

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say. -Marshall McLuhan, 1980

Hubris is stealing fire from the gods. Chutzpah is offering to sell it back.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with people of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare. -Kenko Yoshida, 1352

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. -Voltaire, 1778

There is no remedy so easy as books, which even if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind. -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1762

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. -Robertson Davies

Records carefully preserved for a century were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. -Isaac Asimov