Books and Culture

If the writer who ventures to say something more about books and their uses is wise, he will not begin with an apology; for he will know that, despite all that has been said and...

To get at the heart of Shakespeare's plays, and to secure for ourselves the material and the development of culture which are contained in them, is not the work of a day or of a...

There is a book in the British Museum which would have, for many people, a greater value than any other single volume in the world; it is a copy of Florio's translation of Monta...

"We were reading Plato's Apology in the Sixth Form," says Mr. Symonds in his account of his school life at Harrow. "I bought Cary's crib, and took it with me to London on an _ex...

The importance of reading habitually the best books becomes apparent when one remembers that taste depends very largely on the standards with which we are familiar, and that the...

The books of power, as distinguished from the books of knowledge, include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures, and constitute, in the last analysis, a co...

The study which has found its material and its reward in Dante's "Divine Comedy" or in Goethe's "Faust" is the best possible evidence of the inexhaustible interest in the master...

The peculiar quality which culture imparts is beyond the comprehension of a child, and yet it is something so definite and engaging that a child may recognise its presence and f...

"It is undeniable," says Matthew Arnold, "that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity is the highest function of man; it is proved to be so by man's fin...

Matthew Arnold was in the habit of dwelling on the importance of a free movement of fresh ideas through society; the men who are in touch with such movements are certain to be p...

The ideas which form the substance or substratum of the greatest books are not primarily the products of pure thought; they have a far deeper origin, and their immense power of...

The Lady of Shalott, sitting in her tower, looked into her magic mirror and saw the whole world go by,--monk, maiden, priest, knight, lady, and king. In the mirror of the imagin...

One of the prime characteristics of the man of culture is freedom from provincialism, complete deliverance from rigidity of temper, narrowness of interest, uncertainty of taste,...

There is a general agreement among men that experience is the most effective and successful of teachers; that for many men no other form of education is possible; and that those...

The primary charm of art resides in the freshness of feeling which it reveals and conveys. An art which discloses fatigue, weariness, exhaustion of emotion, deadening of interes...

The law of opposites under which men live is very strikingly brought out in the endeavour to secure a sound and intelligent adjustment to one's time,--a relation intimate and vi...

The instinct which drives men to travel is at bottom identical with that which fills men with passionate desire to know what is in life. Time and strength are often wasted in re...

While it is true that the greatest books betray the most intimate acquaintance with the time in which they are written, and disclose the impress of that time in thought, structu...

No characters appeal more powerfully to the imagination than those impressive figures about whom the literature of tragedy moves,--figures associated with the greatest passions...

One of the chief elements in fiction which make for culture is, primarily, its disclosure of the elementary types of character and experience. A single illustration of this qual...

It is an interesting fact that the four men who have been accepted as the greatest writers who have yet appeared, used either the epic or the dramatic form. It can hardly have b...

Idealism has so often been associated in recent years with vagueness of thought, slovenly construction, and a weak sentimentalism, that it has been discredited, even among those...

These writers are also, by virtue of the faculty of discerning the interior relations of appearances and events, the expositors of that ultimate Idealism which not only discover...

The books of four great writers have been used almost exclusively by way of illustration throughout this discussion of the relation of books to culture. This limited selection m...