"Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint."

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There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton