Style is to the book what smile is to the look.

Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the miracles and beauties of nature, help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moment of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves.

Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books. Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happinest hours of his life to books. He says, 'If any one would make me the greastest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners, and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hunreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I wound not be a king; I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who didn't love reading."

Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk in imagination with the noblest spirits, through the most solemn and charming regions.

Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms where Spenser's shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton's angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of paradise. Science, art, literature, philosophy, -all that man has thought, all that man has done, -the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hunred generations, -all that garnered up for us in the world of books.

书籍之于人犹如记忆之于人。

它记载了我们人类的历史和迄今的发现，还有各个时代积累下来的知识和经验，它们向我们描绘出自然界的奇妙和美丽。当我们身处困境时，它们给我们以帮助；当我们受难哀伤时，它们给我们以慰藉；当我们困倦疲惫时，它们让我们感到愉悦。书籍还能充实我们的头脑，使其充满美好、快乐的思想，帮助我们走出自我，超越自我。

许多人恰如常人所言，人生了无缺憾；然后他们却告诉我们，他们真正的快乐主要来自书籍。麦考利享有财富、名声、地位和权力，而他在自传中却告诉我们他一生最幸福的时刻是从书中获得的。他说道：“如果有人以不读书为条件，使我成为有史以来最伟大的国王，拥有众多的宫殿、花园，享用美酒，乘豪华的马车，着华丽的服饰，还有成千上万的仆人供我驱使，我也会拒绝。我宁愿做一个住在一间堆满书的阁楼里的穷人，也不愿做一个不爱读书的国王。”

书籍给我们日常生活轨迹中播种的快乐是珍贵无价的。在书籍中，我们仿佛与那些最高贵的灵魂并肩而行，穿越那崇高迷人的幽域。

足不出户，坐在炉火旁，我们就能倘祥在地球上最遥远的地方，或者翱翔在斯宾塞和尼尔顿的王国；在哪儿，斯宾塞妙笔下超凡脱俗的仙女蜂拥而至，迎接我们的到来；在哪儿，尼尔顿描写的天使在我们耳边大声地合唱着天堂赞歌。科学、艺术、文学和哲学——人类所有的思想，所有的历史以及一代又一代人用痛苦所换取的经验的结晶——所有这一切都蕴藏于书籍之中。