| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 38632 |
| QUOTATION: | Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the “very best society” that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of “dressing” to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Herman Melville (1819–1891), U.S. author. “A Thought on Book-Binding” (1850), The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces 1839-1860, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 9, eds. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
| WORKS: | Melville Collection. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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