British Literature 

"Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality...But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart." 

 

-William Lyons Phelps (1933)