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7b6d31f
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'n qrt lakhryn ttrk 'thrh bkl t'kyd `l~ qrty lkhS@, fhy thbny wjht nZr jdyd@ 'w tlwn 'mmy b`D lmqT`, lknh tshbh fy m`Zmh ldhbb@ lSGyr@ lty m fty't tnGD `l~ 'lys bwshwshth ldy'm@: (ymknk lmmHk@ bltl`b blklmt Hwl hdh l'mr). 'n 'rfD, f'n qry' Gywr, wl 'qr lky'n mn kn b'n ykwn lh Hq llyl@ l'wl~ `l~ lktb lty 'qrw'h
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Alberto Manguel |
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04ee4c5
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Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there is no such thing.
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progress
chronologies
histories
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Alberto Manguel |
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83799db
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Sartre, in his memoirs, confessed to much the same experience. "Like Plato, I passed from knowledge to its subject. I found more reality in the idea than in the thing because it was given to me first and because it was given for a thing. It was in books that I encountered the universe: digested, classified, labelled, mediated, still formidable."
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Alberto Manguel |
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98f7933
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Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers. Families beg to be united: volume XVIII of the Complete Works of Lope de Vega is announced in a catalogue, calling to the other seventeen that sit, barely leafed through, on my shelf. How fortunate for Captain Nemo to be able to say, during his twenty-thousand-league journey ..
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Alberto Manguel |
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55f7d8c
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n lnZm lshmwly@ lyst lwHyd@ lty tkhsh~ lqr@, bl wHt~ fy sHt lmdrs, wfy khzy'n lmlbs, wfy dwy'r ldwl@ wlsjwn tjry mrqb@ jmhr@ lqr b`yn lrtyb, nZran lm ysh`r lmr bh mn slTn lqr@ wqwth lkmn@. w`l~ lrGm mn l`trf b'n l`lq@ byn lktb wlqry' `lq@ mfyd@ wmthmr@, l 'nh `lq@ t`tbr mtrf`@ wrfD@, rbm l'n mshhd qry' wqd nzw~ fy 'Hd l'rkn wnsy l`lm lmHyT bh yshyr l~ jw shkhSy Gyr qbl llqtHm wl~ nZr@ mnTwy@ `l~ ldht wtSrf 'nny
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Alberto Manguel |
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95b98d4
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There are those who, while reading a book, recall, compare, conjure up emotions from other, previous readings <...> This is one of the most delicate forms of adultery.
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Alberto Manguel |
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b040c5c
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'SbHt ktby hy mwTny lthbt lwHyd, Hyth knt 'stTy` 'n 'tHrk dkhlh fy 'y wqt 'sh, wHsb m tshthyh rGbty wmywly.
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Alberto Manguel |
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74b4062
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the point, the essential quality of the act of reading, now and always, is that it tends to no foreseeable end, to no conclusion. Every reading prolongs another, begun in some afternoon thousands of years ago and of which we know nothing; every reading projects its shadow onto the following page, lending it content and context. In this way, the story grows, layer after layer, like the skin of the society whose history this act preserves.
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Alberto Manguel |
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16a6bf2
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The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.
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library
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Alberto Manguel |
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ca9dfc3
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l tHtj lmktb@ ky tkwn nf`@ 'n tqr' bmjmw`h, dh 'n kl qry yntf` mn ltwzn lmnsb byn lm`rf@ w ljhl, ltdhkr w lnsn.
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Alberto Manguel |
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98d083c
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Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, ..
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Alberto Manguel |
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c518d37
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We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can ..
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Alberto Manguel |
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040af63
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Alexandria and its scholars [...] never mistook the true nature of the past; they knew it to be the source of an ever-shifting present in which new readers engaged with old books which became new in the reading process. Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.
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Alberto Manguel |
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fd3a87f
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Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.
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Alberto Manguel |
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5a319e8
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I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.
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Alberto Manguel |
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9642254
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It is likely that libraries will carry on and survive, as long as we persist in lending words to the world that surrounds us, and storing them for future readers.
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Alberto Manguel |
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a2bb392
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I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days. They don't require that I pretend to know them all, nor do they urge me to become one of the "professional book-handlers" ... who greedily collect books but do not read them...."
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Alberto Manguel |
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f8d61a1
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I think I read in at least two ways. First, by following, breathlessly, the events and the characters without stopping to notice the details, the quickening pace of reading sometimes hurtling the story beyond the last page <...>. Secondly, by careful exploration, scrutinizing the text to understand its ravelled meaning, finding plesasure merely in the sound of the words or in the clues which the words did not wish to reveal, or in what I su..
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Alberto Manguel |
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51e7582
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The categories that a reader brings to a reading, and the categories in which that reading itself is placed - the learned social and political categories, and the physical categories into which a library is divided - constantly modify one another in ways that appear, over the years, more or less arbitrary or more or less imaginative. Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.
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Alberto Manguel |
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06f3ae7
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Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, which suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books. I feel an adventurous pleasure in losing myself among the crowded stacks, superstitiously confident that any established hierarchy of letters or numbers will lea..
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Alberto Manguel |
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7a5b21e
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Hb lmktbt mthl 'kthr lmHbWt, ynbGy 'n yktsb blt`lm, mmn 'Hd ykhTw 'wl mr@ dkhl Grf@ mlyy'@ blktb, wbmknh 'n y`rf blGryz@ kyf ytSrf, mdh sytwq`? wm ldhy synlh, wmhw lmtH? qd ytmlk lmr lr`b bsbb lfwD~ wlSmt wlmrqb@, wltdhkyr lskhr b'n lnsn l y`rf kl shy
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Alberto Manguel |
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c2d8fc8
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A day or so before his death, Borges called Bioy from Geneva. Bioy said that he sounded infinitely sad. "What are you doing in Geneva? Come home," Bioy said to him. "I can't," Borges answered. "And anyway, any place is good enough to die in." Bioy said that in spite of their friendship, he felt, as a writer, hesitant to touch such a good exit line."
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Alberto Manguel |
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b74f9ff
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There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that traditions had declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ours through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and (notwithstanding the layers of readings with which a book come into our hands) essentially become its first discoverers, an experience as astonishing and unexpected.
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Alberto Manguel |
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40e4776
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Libraries are not, never will be, used by everyone.
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Alberto Manguel |
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b0136fe
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Systematisches Lesen ist kaum von Nutzen. Offizielle Bucherlisten (der Klassiker, der Literaturgeschichte, der zensurierten oder empfohlenen Bucher, der Bibliothekskataloge) konnen per Zufall den einen oder anderen nutzlichen Hinweis geben. Die beste Anleitung bieten personliche Launen - das Vertrauen auf das Lustprinzip und der Glaube an den Zufall -, die uns manchmal in einen provisorischen Zustand der Gnade versetzen, uns ermoglichen, Go..
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reading
books
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Alberto Manguel |
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83787b3
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Every book can be, for the right reader, an oracle, responding on occasion even to questions unasked..
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Alberto Manguel |
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d3fc5b8
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Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary...
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Alberto Manguel |
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ec47c59
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ksln ,whn lqw~ ,mtbjH ,mtHdhlq ,md`y lntm l~ lnkhb@ hdhh lSft wGyrh 'lSqt `l~ mr l'ym bl'stdh lshrd ldhhn ,blqry lqSyr lnZr ,wblmwl`yn blktb mdfwn fy lktb ,m`zwl `n `lm lHqy'q wlmt`@ ljsdy@ ,mzwd bsh`wr mn ltrf` `l~ lakhryn ldhyn lyqdrwn qym@ lklmt lmHfwZ@ dkhl Glfyn mGbryn
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Alberto Manguel |
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3d65b64
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'n lHj@ tj`l l'shy tzdhr fy Hyn 'n ltmlk ydhblh
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Alberto manguel |
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6ee517d
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Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight could not have lasted very long; perhaps the car stopped for a moment, perhaps it slowed down long enough for me to see, large and looming shapes similar to those in my book, but shapes that I had never seen before. and yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metam..
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Alberto Manguel |
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d505455
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tSfH ktb wltjwl byn lrfwf hm jz Hmymy mn fn lqr@ wl ymkn stbdlh btqlyb shsh@.
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Alberto Manguel |
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42ea1f4
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nn njd fy kl SfH@ mn SfHt ktb nTl`h athr Hytn ldhty@
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Alberto Manguel |
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7072fa8
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kn kl ktb 'qrw'h `lm qy'm bdhth 'lj' lyh.
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Alberto Manguel |
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8bfe7fe
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any library, by its very existence, conjures up its forbidden or forgotten double: an invisible but formidable library of the books that, for conventional reasons of quality, subject matter or even volume, have been deemed unfit for survival under this specific roof.
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Alberto Manguel |
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053cf5c
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Each reader is but one chapter in the life of a book, and unless he passes his knowledge on to others, it is as if he condemned the book to be buried alive.
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Alberto Manguel |
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bba82f9
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Ancient Egypt 1300BC Be a scribe! Engrave this in your heart So that your name might live on like theirs! The scroll is better than the carved stone. A man has died: his corpse is dust, And his people have passed from the land. It is a book that makes him be remembered In the mouth of the speaker who reads him.
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engraving
scribe
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Alberto Manguel |
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622e758
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Saint John, in a moment of confusion, tells us not to love the world because "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,is not of the Father, but is of the world." This injunction is at best a paradox. Our humble and astonishing inheritance is the world and only the world, whose existence we constantly test (and prove) by telling ourselves stories about it. The suspicion that we and the..
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libraries
world
meaning
god
consolation
naturalism
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Alberto Manguel |
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0d62f8d
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nHn n`rf lmdh nqr' Ht~ `ndm l n`rf kyf nqr'
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Alberto manguel |
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e4f0d76
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You don't immediately understand something like that, even when it's explained to you clearly. You don't understand it, because you don't know how to understand it. You lack that space in your mind that would let you take it in. You are incapable of believing in the possibility of what they are telling you, because nothing of the sort has ever happened to you before.
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Alberto Manguel |
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29a6ce4
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dh kn llyl bn "kwws", dhn "lyth" 'w lnsyn hw Hfydh ldhy wld mn ltHd lrhyb byn "llyl" w "ltnfr"."
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Alberto Manguel |
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94ec72b
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Words tell us what we, as a society, believe the world to be
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Alberto Manguel |
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dd6acf4
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n lHkm ldykttwryyn ykhfwn lktb 'kthr mn 'y khtr` akhr `l~ lTlq
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Alberto manguel |
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8595a2b
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Books are our best possessions in life, they are our immortality.
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Alberto Manguel |
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491620a
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There is nothing," Naude wrote, "that renders a Library more recommendable, than when every man finds in it that which he is looking for and cannot find anywhere else; therefore the perfect motto is, that there exists no book, however bad or badly reviewed, that may not be sought after in some future time by a certain reader." These remarks demand from us an impossibility, since every library is, by needs, an incomplete creation, a work-in-..
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Alberto Manguel |