Nicholas A. Basbanes > Quotes

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,
Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.
Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted.
Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy,
Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution.
Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not.
When at last he goeth to his final punishment,
Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
[attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain]”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

“With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person's character. ”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes and the Eternal Passion for Books

“A strong and bitter book-sickness floods one's soul. How ignominious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of paper, print, and dead men's sentiments! ”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

“Aeschines knew that if he had any hopes of humbling his charismatic rival, he had to reinforce his views with facts, not heated speculation. Addressing a legal assembly of citizens known as graphe paranomon, he built his attack around this tart observation: "A fine thing, my fellow Athenians, a fine thing is the preservation of public records. Records do not change, and they do not shift sides with traitors, but they grant to you, the people, the opportunity to know, whenever you want, which men, once bad, through some transformation now claim to be good".”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World – The Remarkable Final Trilogy on Bibliophiles from the Leading Authority

“The transmission of knoledge from generation to generation is one of the miracles of civilization.”
― Nicholas Basbanes

“Thamus, as Socrates told the tale, saw a threat to the very nature of philosophical discourse. Here is what the Egyptian king supposedly told the clever god: Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a recipe for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality. They will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World – The Remarkable Final Trilogy on Bibliophiles from the Leading Authority

“How completely my life is bound up in this love—how broken and incomplete when he is absent a moment; what infinite peace and fullness when he is present. And he loves me to the utter most desire of my heart. Can any child excite as strong a passion as this we feel for each other?”
― Nicholas A. Basbanes, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow