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"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves."
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"Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away."
"A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat."
"I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it."
"I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we don't know."
"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me."
Explore more quotes by Gilbert Highet
"Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating."
"A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health."
"What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promise of those?"
"The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul."
"Many people have played themselves to death. Many people have eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody ever thought himself to death."
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