Lawrence Clark Powell Quotes & Sayings

Reading books is good,
Rereading good books is better. — Lawrence Clark Powell

I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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? — Lawrence Clark Powell

Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time. — Lawrence Clark Powell

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to. — Lawrence Clark Powell

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed. — Lawrence Clark Powell

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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. — Lawrence Clark Powell

[A writer] must try to think clearly, to feel deeply, to write honestly. If he is fortunate he will make a living, but his work will never be anymore essentially clear and deep and honest than he himself is, and he will be judged finally not for how many copies his books have sold, but for what they have done to enrich the lives of their readers, now and in time to come. — Lawrence Clark Powell

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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

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. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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. — Lawrence Clark Powell

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

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength. — Lawrence Clark Powell