The Delight of Great Books Quotes

“In the Fourth Eclogue also Vergil has still the enthusiasm of youth. Few poems are so rich in magnificent lines or in stirring hopes... His hope is for a golden age in which there shall be no toil, no commerce, no sorrow, yet he still wants a high development of the intellectual life, the speculations of science, the practical application of knowledge.”
― John Erskine, The Delight of Great Books

“Whenever we read a book we love, we change it, to some extent. We read into it our own interpretations, and the meanings which the words have taken on in our time. If a book is so rigid that it cannot lend itself to these fluctuations, it is useful only while it seems strictly true, and afterwards it is completely out of date.”
― John Erskine, The Delight of Great Books