Do "Classics" still matter?

I read a quote from Mark Twain about a year ago as I drifted through Goodreads.

“Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.”

At the time this really stood out to me at the time, as even though I confessed to adoring books. I hadn't read any "classics." I pondered  the relevance of them, how could they relate to a contemporary audience? Why are they "classics" in the first place? But all in all I made a promise that I would make an effort to read classics...but what is a classic?

Naturally being one of today's lazy youth. I used Wikipedia to find out. 'A classic book is a book accepted to be particularly significant or noteworthy within a society.' That seems like a pretty solid, if not boring, description, so I delved deeper. They are the books we are forced to study and naturally hate because of them. They are the books we hear adults brag about reading and using in pretentious arguments. They are the books that people quote on Facebook to seem smart.

At this point I realised classics seemed to be related to how people are viewed. Then I met my best friend. Fee is obsessed with Jane Austen, an author I had always disliked (nothing personal I just figure she is kind of a hypocrite and her writing is a bit...dry). Fee talked about Austen in a way that really made me think about when I read her in school.  I figured I may be wrong about disliking the book so I gave it another try.

I still hated it. Although the second time I did feel myself relating more the Elizabeth. She is sharp and observant: No one crosses her field of vision without being assessed, and judged. I've always been one to make snap decisions and the book warned against that.

I decoded to read some more "classics" to see what the hype was about. I'd heard pretentious people raving about 'The Catcher in the Rye' plenty of times so I figured it could be fun to tear that apart.

THIS WAS THE MOMENT IT ALL FELL INTO PLACE!

I finished this book a mere hour later and wished I had read it when I was sixteen. I was so angry at the world, at myself. I hated everyone around me but I also loved them and never wanted them to leave. I looked at the world and called out its bullshit and felt so unbearably alone and yet I hated being around people. If I had read this book when I was sixteen. I would not have felt so alone. Holden is the embodiment of every angsty teenager, and not in a patronizing way. Salinger seems to remember exactly how it feels to be a teenager even though he wasn't a one when he wrote this decades ago.

I read more classics and the lessons followed. I quickly came to the conclusion that "classics" CAN and DO matter. We call them "classics" because they know something. Something about our society (Fahrenheit 451) or ourselves nature (Lord of the Flies). They give us insight into ourselves personally (The Great Gatsby) and to show, from one human being to another, that many of these isolating feelings are infact  universally shared.

Afterall...we read to know we are not alone.