Quotes by Lawrence Clark Powell

“The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three Ss: 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.”

“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.”

“To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.”

“Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed; it is the same as it has always been, since Callimachus administered the great library in Alexandrea.”

“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 somethin”

“A book is one of the most patient of all mans 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”

“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...”

“Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.”

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

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

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.

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

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

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.

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