Helen Vendler Quotes

Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands. My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

Libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books.

On pavements and the bark of trees I have found whole worlds.

One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.

Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of books, even the smell... Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing.

The pursuit of natural knowledge, the investigation of the world - mental and material - in which we live, is not a dull and spiritless affair: rather is it a voyage of adventure of the human mind, a holiday for reckless and imaginative souls.

The Geometer has the special privilege to carry out, by abstraction, all constructions by means of the intellect. Who, then, would wish to prevent me from freely considering figures hanging on a balance imagined to be at an infinite distance beyond the confines of the world?

Reading is an act of civilization; it's one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

Browsing for books with a mouse and screen is not nearly as joyful an act as wandering the stacks and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of knowledge. The best libraries are places of imagination, education and community. The best libraries have mystery to them.

I'm inspired by questions I have that I try to figure out the answers to through my writing.

I started reading seriously after I was in college. I read comic books. I read every 'Power Man' and 'Iron Fist' that ever came out. I had a teacher introduce me to poetry, and that kind of woke me up.

'Minecraft' is a game about creation, yes. But it is just as much a game about secret knowledge.

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.

For me, books have been a life-long resource-to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking.

Books think for me. I can read anything which I call a book.

I've always thought of him [Barack Obama] and from conversations know him to be a guy who takes the long view, who doesn't get too high, doesn't get too low and seizes the opportunities when they're there and knows how to ride the wave. I ascribe that to Hawaii. He's a body surfer, so he knows how to get on the wave. He knows just the right time.

Curiosity must be kept alive.

Entrepreneurial creation is the generation, de novo, of novelty and surprise- freedom of choice originating in the world of ideas, and imagination beyond all concern with chemicals. The contrary view- that all ideas are determined by material relationships- is the materialist superstition.

Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.