Fill your soul - buy books!

A room without books is like a body without a soul. - GKC

I am vice president of the Friends of the Gates Public Library. Like Friends organizations across the U.S., we try to help the library in any way we can. One of those ways is raising money to help buy equipment and pay for programs.

Our main source of income in a series of used book sales. We have one tonight, and I will be working at it.

With books on my mind, I naturally thought of “He-who-must-be-quoted.”

And, of course, he had plenty to say on the subject of books.

The opening quote is one I’ve always liked. I know that when I go some place new – including people’s homes – I always check out the books. What they have on their shelves can reveal a lot about them.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. - GKC

I believe we can live without literature – but life is poorer without it

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. - GKC

For literature is an expression of part of basic human nature.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. - GKC

And it is the old books, the classics which usually offer the richest source of nourishment for the mind and soul.

And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads. – GKC

Despite what the critics say.

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. - GKC

So I go to work at the book sale. Go to your own library book sales and support your libraries that way.

Maybe you will help to save a mind, or even a soul!