Literary Birthday – 24 May – Maurice Francis Egan

Maurice Francis Egan was born on 24 May 1852 and died on 15 January 1924.

Maurice Francis Egan Quotes

1. The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books.
2. Emerson tried to teach us that there can be infinite beauties in a little space—untold joys within a day—and he asks us to take short outlooks.
3. A constant reader is one who always returns to his first loves.
4. One of the most pleasant qualities of a reader who has lived among books all his life is that he does not attempt always to recommend books to others, or to preach about them.
5. I have never read any good book that was not related intimately to at least a score of other books. It is true that in a measure a book gives to us what we take to it; and we can only take much out of it when we approach the group of ministering authors who alone make life both cheerful and endurable.

Maurice Francis Egan was an American writer and diplomat. He had a successful career as a Catholic journalist, literary critic, and novelist. He was a professor of English, and served as United States Ambassador to Denmark. In his bestselling memoir Ten Years Near the German Frontier, published in 1919, Egan chronicled his diplomatic experiences there during an eventful tenure that encompassed World War I. Egan’s works also included Confessions of a Book Lover (1922), the autobiography Recollections of a Happy Life (1924), and many short stories, poems, and essays.

Image: National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Francis_Egan.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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