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.
Online education, then, can serve two goals. For students lucky enough to have access to great teachers, blended learning can mean even better outcomes at the same or lower cost. And for the millions here and abroad who lack access to good, in-person education, online learning can open doors that would otherwise remain closed.
The youth is the hope of our future.
After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.
The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
I don't know anybody who said, 'I love that teacher, he or she gave a really good homework set,' or 'Boy, that was the best class I ever took because those exams were awesome.' That's not what people want to talk about. It's not what influences people in one profession or another.
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