Sunday Inspiration: What an astonishing thing a book is

what an astonishing thing a book is

“What an astonishing thing a book is.

It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts

on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person,

maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently

inside your head, directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,

binding together people who never knew each other,

citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

-Carl Sagan

 

8 Comments

  1. Kathy Marx on October 24, 2021 at 4:51 am

    Love this thought.

  2. Pat Kennedy on October 24, 2021 at 5:26 am

    What a neat description! It puts a smile in my head!

  3. Linda P on October 24, 2021 at 9:23 am

    Yes

  4. Nancy Lepri on October 24, 2021 at 11:35 am

    Amen! I can live without TV or the Interney, but not books!

  5. RITA Tellier on October 24, 2021 at 6:22 pm

    I love a book that makes me wonder what the people are doing when I’m not reading.

  6. betty anne strobel on October 24, 2021 at 9:27 pm

    Really liked The House Guests!
    EXTREMELY hard to put down this book. Read it in less than 2 days.

  7. Pat Kennedy on October 24, 2021 at 10:06 pm

    I like this poem so much, I am going to find it somewhere in a pretty printed form. I never paid attention to Carl before. But he was quite a fellow!
    Thanks to you too, Emilie!

  8. Kathleen O on October 25, 2021 at 9:58 am

    Books are my salvation.

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