Written Tradition Quotes

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

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

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.

Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it falls, cannot be rekindled.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Literature is the immortality of speech.

It is only through books that we partake of the great harvest that is human civilization across the ages.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

The written word still enjoyed a certain prestige here. It was a sluggish country.