Lawrence Clark Powell Quotes

• Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Love, Book, Communication

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1971). “The Little Package: Pages on Literature and Landscape from a Traveling Bookman's Life”, Books for Libraries

  52 Copy quote

• No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Greatness, Civilization, Library

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  18 Copy quote

• We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Children, Book, Reading

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  15 Copy quote

• The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Feelings, Three

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  8 Copy quote

• Believers and doers are what we need - faithful librarians who are humble in the presence of books.... To be in a library is one of the purest of all experiences. This awareness of library's unique, even sacred nature, is what should be instilled in our neophites.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Humble, Unique

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  8 Copy quote

• To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Creative, Vision, Needs

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  8 Copy quote

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

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Needs, Defense

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1954). “The Alchemy of Books: And Other Essays and Addresses on Books & Writers”

  7 Copy quote

• A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Mean, Eye

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Reading books is good,
  Rereading good books is better.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Reading, Rereading

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  10 Copy quote

• Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Ocean, Book, Islands

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1987). “Next to Mother's Milk--: An Engelhard Lecture on the Book”

  4 Copy quote

• Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Reading, Heart

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  7 Copy quote

• We all think were going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectation aren't met, but sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Thinking, Expectations

  4 Copy quote

• I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Suffering, Facts

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1973). “Books in My Baggage: Adventures in Reading and Collecting”, Greenwood Publishing Group

  4 Copy quote

• Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Use, Reader

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  4 Copy quote

• This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Doe, Language

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  4 Copy quote

• I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Spring, Book, Writing

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  4 Copy quote

• What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Marijuana, Long

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1968). “Bookman's Progress: The Selected Writings of Lawrence Clark Powell”

  9 Copy quote

• [A writer] must try to think clearly, to feel deeply, to write honestly. If he is fortunate he will make a living, but his work will never be anymore essentially clear and deep and honest than he himself is, and he will be judged finally not for how many copies his books have sold, but for what they have done to enrich the lives of their readers, now and in time to come.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

  4 Copy quote

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