What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can hardly read through in a lifetime? ... Everything that is carried to excess is wrong. What excuses can you find for a man who is eager to buy bookcases of ivory and citrus wood, to collect the works of unknown and discredited authors, and who sites yawning amid so many thousands of books, whose backs' titles please him more than any other part of them? Thus in the houses of the laziest men you will see the works of all the orators and historians stacked upon book shelves reaching right up to the ceiling. At the present day a library has become a necessary appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath. I would excuse them straightaway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall furniture.
-- Seneca, Roman Philosopher and Author