The delight of books
Books delight our innermost selves, they speak to us, advise us, and are united to us by a kind of living and clear friendship.
- from a letter of Petrarch to Giovanni dell’Incisa (Rerum familiarum III, 18).
I’ll give it to you in the original Latin, which might seem high-faluting, but is actually just copied from the novel Romola by George Eliot, from my nice Penguin classics version which gives you much-appreciated footnote translations (and I do have some kind of fondness for Latin, I must say).
Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur; consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.
Both George Eliot and Christina Rossetti quote Petrarch. I think there’s something in that for me. Among other things, such as being considered by many as the father of the Renaissance, he is known as the first person to climb a mountain for pleasure alone, merely for the delight of looking from the summit.
Reading Romola makes me want to go to Florence.