Bibliophilia

St. Hugh of Lincoln wrote the following while prior at Witham, the first Carthusian house in England:

Our books are our delight and our wealth in time of peace, our offensive and defensive arms in time of war, our food when we are hungry, adn our medicine when we are sick.

(Charles Montalembert, The Monks of the West: From Saint Benedict to Saint Bernard, vol. 5 [London: Nimmo, 1896), 208; cited in Thomas E. Woods, Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization [Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005], 43.)

Hear hear, St. Hugh!