The Haunted Bookshop

"The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect... He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all. He dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand half knowledges. Almost unconciously he begins to rate literature according to what people ask for... That way lies intellectual suicide."

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop p 25