A Magical World

Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
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"Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed." ~ Germaine Greer (b. 1939), Australian writer. "Still in Melbourne, January, 1987," Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989)

"Be a little careful of your Library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here & get books that will open your eyes, & your ears, & your curiosity, & turn you inside out or outside in." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Journal entry, July 1873. "Emerson in His Journals" , ed. by Joel Porte (1982)

When I was a junior high girl in Gary, Indiana we had a mobile library parked at the corner of our street during the summer. It was a large camper/trailer, not huge but filled with the most wondrous collection of books in this child's eyes. I could walk to the corner of the church property and come home with armfuls of books that took me to the far ends of the earth, taught me about science and stimulated my imagination. I read most of the books in that small library, some more than once. The magic is still there, inside the library, big or small; I feel it every time I walk in. Someone I knew once said, "There are libraries full of books, full of things that I don't know." The magic is in the discovery of this knowledge.

Submission for PXITE topic "library". (end of post)