66 Owning Books

名称：66 Owning Books
内容简介：
晨读英语美文 文化百科
[00:04.82]We enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed.
[00:10.39]A borrowed book is like a guest in the house;
[00:14.33]it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality.
[00:19.91]You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof.
[00:26.59]But your own books belong to you;
[00:29.97]you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality.
[00:35.45]Books are for use, not for show;
[00:39.05]you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up,
[00:42.99]or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down.
[00:47.48]A good reason for marking favorite passages in books
[00:52.08]is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings,
[00:58.42]to refer to them quickly, and then in later years,
[01:02.47]it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail.
[01:06.85]Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth;
[01:10.79]the instinct of private property can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils.
[01:18.23]The best of mural decorations is books;
[01:22.05]they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper,
[01:27.30]they are more attractive in design,
[01:29.93]and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities,
[01:34.86]so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight,
[01:38.58]you are surrounded with intimate friends.
[01:41.53]The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing.
[01:47.77]Books are of the people, by the people, for the people.
[01:52.80]Literature is the immortal part of history;
[01:56.85]it is the best and most enduring part of personality.
[02:00.90]Book-friends have this advantage over living friends;
[02:05.60]you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it.
[02:12.39]The great dead are beyond our physical reach,
[02:16.10]and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible.
[02:20.04]But in a private library,
[02:22.23]you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens.
[02:30.44]And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best.
[02:36.45]They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you,
[02:42.47]to make a favorable impression.
[02:44.77]You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor;
[02:49.36]only instead of seeing them masked,
[02:52.31]you look into their innermost heart of heart.