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.

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.

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.

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?

Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.

Believers and doers are what we need - faithful librarians who are humble in the presence of books.... To be in a library is one of the purest of all experiences. This awareness of library's unique, even sacred nature, is what should be instilled in our neophites.

This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.