
"Not Dead Yet" (1999).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)
Bk. I, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)
"Not Dead Yet" (1999).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)
“Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.”
Source: The Quotable Fulton Sheen: A Topical Compilation of the Wit, Wisdom, and Satire of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
"Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838) http://www.americanunitarian.org/selfculture.htm
Context: I have insisted on our own activity as essential to our progress; but we were not made to live or advance alone. Society is as needful to us as air or food. A child doomed to utter loneliness, growing up without sight or sound of human beings, would not put forth equal power with many brutes; and a man, never brought into contact with minds superior to his own, will probably run one and the same dull round of thought and action to the end of llfe.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. 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. Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
Source: The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade
“Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.”
Source: The Library at Night
“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”
Source: Flaubert's Parrot