Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books.
Herman Hesse quoted on Brain Pickings 23 October 2016
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/07/the-magic-of-the-book-hermann-hesse-my-belief/?mc_cid=c7f9956a1e&mc_eid=4c6968d2e4
