Ink and Bone (The Great Library, #1)

by Rachel Caine

instructed by the more developed minds of men to ensure they do not wrongly interpret the riches that the Library offers. For a perversion of knowledge is surely worse than a lack of it.

The lion rose from its haunches, shook itself, and padded down the steps, soundless and beautiful and deadly. The other beasts woke, too, their eyes flickering red, bodies stretching.

Jess had never imagined that someone would be so empty that they’d need to destroy something that precious to feel full.

There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge, and wisdom. A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not, in itself, wisdom. The Library holds itself to be the keeper of both knowledge and wisdom, but it is not true. So much should never be held in the hands of so few, for it is a natural, venal habit of men to hold to power. And knowledge is the purest form of power.

But there is no wisdom without knowledge, no progress without danger, and I am not the Library’s child! I must acquire my own information, build my own knowledge, and, through experience, transform it to the treasured gold of wisdom.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.

“I’m as good a Catholic as you,” Jess said. “I just don’t hold with making the world into copies of what I like.”

he began to realize how much he had to learn about how different the world was from the theory of it.