No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.
Interpretation
The importance of libraries in fostering academic and intellectual greatness is paramount to a civilization's success.
Lawrence Clark Powell emphasizes the critical role that libraries play in the advancement of knowledge and culture within a society. He suggests that the greatness of educational institutions is intrinsically linked to the resources and knowledge available in their libraries, and when libraries lose their importance, it signifies a decline in civilization itself.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of funding for public libraries.
A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.
I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?
What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.
This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
As a historically voracious reader - pre-baby, I averaged a book every week or two, and when I was a kid, I'd routinely read a book a day - I never understood how some people could not read. When I heard people say they didn't have time to read, in my head, I simultaneously pitied and ridiculed them: there was always time to read.
How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigour.
Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.
I had the great good fortune of getting my Ph.D. in the very first year that universities were actively seeking women faculty. The government was putting pressure on universities to hire more women.
Our lives are greatly enriched when we immerse ourselves in literature and spiritual writing, not because we are going to be tested but purely for the sake of enrichment.
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