Literature—our great archive of human expression… – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Resisting the Kindle,” The Atlantic, 2009 March 2nd

[L]iterature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers… – Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteen

I… was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. – David Hume (1712–1776)

To literature belongs the mighty privilege of embalming, for all ages, the departed kings of intellect. There they repose within the eternal pyramids of their fame. – Robert Aris Willmott, “Glimpses of the Pageant of Literature,” c.1844