“Roger Bacon held that three classes of substance were capable of magic: the herbal, the mineral, and the verbal. With their leaves of fiber, their inks of copperas and soot, and their words, books are an amalgam of the three.” — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“Andras Riedlmayer described a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“In the ideal public library, we are all readers of the “middling sort.” Reading whatever we will, we fulfill a public function, preserving the… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“The bibliographer in the digital age returns to the revelatory practice of her medieval forebears. Librarians, like those scribes of the Middle Ages, do… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“What we face is not a loss of books but the loss of a world. As in Alexandria after Aristotle’s time, or the universities… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“The middle ages did not care much for alphabetical order, because they were committed to rational order. To the medieval mind, the universe [is]… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“But the library - especially one so vast - is no mere cabinet of curiosities; it's a world, complete and uncompleteable, and it is… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
“Roger Bacon held that three classes of substance were capable of magic: the herbal, the mineral, and the verbal. With their leaves of fiber,… — Matthew Battles Copy Share Image
![“The middle ages did not care much for alphabetical order, because they were committed to rational order. To the medieval mind, the universe [is] a harmonious whole whose parts are related to one another. It was the responsibility of the author or scholar to discern these rational relationships…” quote by Matthew Battles](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/da2/matthew-battles-50730_alphabetical-order_the-middle-ages-did-not-care-much-for-al_2819215.jpg)
