These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. Gilbert Highet
About This Quote

When you open these books, you are opening doors to the time when man was discovering himself. The spirit of the people who once lived lives in these books. When you open up these books, you are opening up a window into man’s history.

Source: The Immortal Profession

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More Quotes By Gilbert Highet
  1. These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one...

  2. Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55)

  3. The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.

  4. A good teacher is a determined person.

  5. A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health.

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