Dangerous books

"Now hear the story of how that man of whom I had begun to speak, Cicero, always so dear and beloved to me since childhood, made a fool of me. I own a huge volume of his letters, which I wrote out myself in my own hand, because the copy was a problem for the scribes; at that time I was in ill health, but my great love of the work, my delight in it, and my desire to have it, won out over the physical difficulty and effort. You have seen that that this book used to stand in the door to my library, leaning on the doorpost, so that it would always be close at hand. So, I come in the room, thinking about something else, and it so happens that the fringe of my robe accidentally caught on the book; which fell on my left leg just above the heel and gave it a slight knock. I pick it up and jokingly say: ‘What’s the matter, my dear Cicero, why do you strike me?’ He says nothing. But the next day as I’m coming in he strikes me again, and again I pick him up and, with a laugh, put him back in his place. To cut a long story short: having been injured by him several times, I come to my senses and put him up on the shelf, as if he didn’t deserve to be on the floor."

Petrarch, Epistolae familiares XXI.10; Latin here (sections 15-17).