Quotes by Horace Traubel

“Wilde strikes an evangel note. It is a note that lifts itself through sorrow and slavery to joy and freedom. Puts seed in the ground. Into you. When a book stops doing that it is dead. No matter how pretty it may be as a corpse it is dead.”

“If you plant a book deep enough in the soil it will come back every spring. Draughts cannot kill it. Nor frosts. Nor overhot suns. Nor overcold snows.... It is alive? Does its nerve tingle when you touch it? Does it still answer you back life for life? Here is a book... made five hundred years before we commenced our Christian total of years. Is it a corpse? No. It still has red in its cheeks. Its eyes sparkle. Its handclasp is warm.... You do not need to set back the clock to get contemporary with it.... It takes me back and forward with equal ease. Time has nothing to do with [it]. It has bettered all the challenges of time. It has neither age nor youth. It has life.”