William Dean Howells Quotes

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

There is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism.

History is the study of what civilizations die from. Literature is the study of what civilizations live for.

Paper is at the center of so many of the elements of the development of civilization.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and (as a poet has said) "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are companions , teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilization.

Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.

Without the library, you have no civilization.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

That's what this country needs -- more books!

You can tell an awful lot about a civilization by how it spends its money.

… a barbarian who could not write one sentence of grammar.

A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.

In order to live in a different country, you have to love something there. You have to love something there. You have to love either the spirit of the laws or the economic opportunities, or the - well, history of the country, the language perhaps, literature.

America has long been the land of immigrants.

There is a lot of talk in the academy about the death of the humanities. Based on my readers' response and their interest in history and literature and art, the death of the humanities has been grossly overstated.

The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined.

One thing we do know is that mass literacy is a product of the 19th century, at least in English-speaking cultures - Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, and the U. S.

Barbarism is not the inheritance of our pre-history. It is the companion that dogs our every step.

for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.

The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.

I really do believe that the Jesuit system is better for a country.

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.