BEST OF UNIVERSITIES
Just a hundred years ago a public meeting was held in London in support of the founding of the London Library. Among the speakers was Thomas Carlyle. "A good book," he said, "is the purest essence of a human soul. . . . The founding of a library is one of the greatest things we can do with regard to results. It is one of the quietest of things; but there is nothing that I know of at bottom more important. ... A collection of books is the best of all universities; for the university only teaches us how to read the book; you must go to the book itself for what it is. I call it a Church also . . . which every devout soul may enter—a Church but with no quarrelling, no Church-rates. . . ." "The remainder of the sentence," says the reporter, "was drowaed in cheers and laughter, in the midst of which Mr. Carlyle sat down."
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19401005.2.167.4
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 84, 5 October 1940, Page 19
Word Count
155BEST OF UNIVERSITIES Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 84, 5 October 1940, Page 19
Using This Item
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Evening Post. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in