“Latin literature would almost certainly have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down.”
Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found
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Thomas Cahill 58
American scholar and writer 1940Related quotes
Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

[Z. Elmarsafy, A. Bernard, D. Attwell, Debating Orientalism, https://books.google.com/books?id=VP6ARP2m-D0C&pg=PA82, 13 June 2013, Springer, 978-1-137-34111-2, 82]

“Now a nation’s character is in its literature.”
The Monthly Magazine

"China and the Federal Union" an address at the Federal Union organization, New York City (April 1942) http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/Buck/excerpt-fu.html

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“Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.”