One cannot help feeling that its guardians sometimes miss the point of literature, which is not to cut gems of flashing and exquisite rarity but to communicate, to convey a meaning, an art, a story, a fantasy, even a mystery, to someone.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "One cannot help feeling that its guardians sometimes miss the point of literature, which is not to cut gems of flashing and exquisite rarity but to communicate, to convey a meaning, an art, a story, a fantasy, even a mystery, to someone." in the context of "Barbara Tuchman, "The Book," lecture at the Library of Congress, October 17, 1979. Cited in The Quotable Writer, William A. Gordon, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2000." to mean that wisdom is timeless.