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A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.
John Cowper Powys
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote illustrates the transformative power of books, depicting them as entities that can evoke strong emotions and reactions.

John Cowper Powys compares a bookshop to various potent and dangerous places, suggesting that books have the ability to profoundly impact the mind and emotions of readers. Just as dynamite, poisons, and intoxicants can alter one's state of being, so too can literature provoke thought, inspire change, or lead one away from reality, thereby highlighting the thrilling and sometimes perilous nature of engaging with written words.

Themes

BooksLiteraturePowerEmotionsImpact

In practice

Example use cases

In a book club meeting discussing the impact of literature on our lives.

More from John Cowper Powys

To read great books does not mean one becomes ‘bookish’; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.
John Cowper PowysRead

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