Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.
He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.
Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.
...and luckily I have enough in my head to balance what is wanting in my back.
Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.
Imagine! It is the real power of a book--not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature.