Excerpt from Literature of the World: An Introductory Study
When the term literature is properly used it denotes writings or records that are of permanent value, that have human interest, and that have beauty of form.
Books, like plants and animals, must struggle for existence. Those that survive after perhaps hundreds of years have stood a supreme test, and back of them is the authority of generations. Such books are not often prosy or uninteresting. They are broad in their appeal, they touch us in a personal and intimate way, and they interpret to us the richest products of our civilization. We read them for their own sake, and when we go to them they do not turn us empty away.
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