Bernard Berenson, One Year's Reading For Fun (1942) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), p. 59 [5 May 1942]:
As I have occasion to consult a volume of Deutsche Biographie, I look at all items of interest. They consist of entries for people known to me not only as names but even as careers and values they are people, however, about whom I have never read a biographical account. How much one would like to know more about what one cannot give time to. One's ignorance increases as one reads. One finds persons, places, events referred to, whether hitherto unmentioned or too vaguely to satisfy, and one hungers for more till either accident or imperative need drives one to procure information.