The Hearts of Men Centuries Dead
"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
--Clarence Day, Jr.
(I snatched this quote from an agent's site, The Literary Group and the photo is by Dagny Willis, featuring ruins of a house in Alaska.)
Comments
There's something about coming across a structure in a wilderness, isolated not just from other structures but from, well, pretty much everything else. What went through the heads of the people who lived there? (Which, practically by definition when the notion of "a structure" is introduced, means "lived there intentionally.")