Art & Creativity Quote by Isaac Barrow

A book, Barrow implies, isn’t a hobby; it’s a social infrastructure. In one compact sentence he quietly upgrades reading from private pleasure to public insurance policy: love books, and you’re never emotionally uninsured. The line works because it borrows the language of human relationships - “faithful friend,” “wholesome counsellor,” “cheerful companion,” “effectual comforter” - and then transfers that trust to an object that doesn’t flake, gossip, or die. In a century riddled with plague, civil war, and confessional whiplash, that promise of reliable company isn’t quaint; it’s survival rhetoric.

As a mathematician and Anglican divine, Barrow also smuggles in a worldview about order. Books stand in for a disciplined mind: counsel that is “wholesome,” comfort that is “effectual.” Those adjectives are doing ideological work. He’s not praising any reading; he’s praising reading that steadies you, corrects you, keeps you fit for duty. The subtext is faintly paternal: the right texts will train your conscience better than the wrong crowd.

There’s an early-modern media politics here too. Print culture was expanding, and with it the idea that authority could be consulted on demand. Barrow frames that new access as intimacy. The book becomes a portable mentor, a pocket-sized community, a moral technology. It’s also a subtle defense of inward life: when institutions fail, the page remains legible, ready to meet you where you are and, gently, where you should be.