The object of literature is to make man a wiser and happier being. The poet makes us happy because he tells us how we may become so. – Charles Lanman, “Thoughts on Literature,” 1840

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

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

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