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Quotes of the Day for 23 February 2005 - Books

Record keeping at the end of the 14th century wasn't what it is today, so we don't really know that Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg was born at Mainz, Germany on this day in 1400. We're not even certain of the year, it might have been as much as five years earlier. But by many accounts (including mine) he was the most important person of the second millennium, if for no other reason than we can do so much better job of recording history as a result of his pioneering work. I've chosen a few bookish quotes.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilization grow old and die out, but in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen.
     - Clarence Day, 1874 - 1935

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
     - Edward Morgan Forster, 1879 - 1970

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.
     - Kenko Yoshida, 1283 - 1352

Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.
     - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 BC - AD 65

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
     - Tryon Edwards, 1809 - 1894

When you give someone a book, you don't give him just paper, ink, and glue. You give him the possibility of a whole new life.
     - Christopher Morley, 1890 - 1957

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