quotations about libraries
It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.
ANNE FADIMAN
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
When you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
slogan
My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.
PETER GOLKIN
attributed, The Librarian's Book of Quotes
Libraries collect the works of genius of every language and every age.
GEORGE BANCROFT
History of the Colonization of the United States
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Dreamtigers
My library is a friend of a thousand years.
KYO-SYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
A great library contains the diary of the human race.
GEORGE DAWSON
Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library
He obviously regards libraries as dinosaurs that are only repositories for books. Before the digital age, that was somewhat true; however, libraries long ago saw the information age coming and have adapted quite well. Libraries no longer look at their mission as being a "book lender," but as community centers available to the public for the dissemination of information.
P. D. MOWBRAY, JR.
"Libraries are more than books", Roanoke Times, May 19, 2016
A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labor, and the struggle, represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake, all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books?
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Star Papers: Or, Experiences of Art and Nature
A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.
SHELBY FOOTE
attributed, North Carolina Libraries
It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA
The Historian
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-travelling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor: the ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise; odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold.
ROBERT ELDRIDGE ARIS WILLMOTT
Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature
Libraries ... are as the shrines where all the relics of ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays Or Counsels, Civil & Moral
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Room of One's Own
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.
ANATOLE FRANCE
La Vie littéraire
While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
KURT VONNEGUT
A Man Without a Country
You receive this writing that you may know how to preserve the books which I shall deliver to you; and you shall set these in order and anoint them with oil of cedar and put them away in earthen vessels.
APOCRYPHA
Testament of Moses 1:16-18
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY
My Reading Life
A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Th' first thing to have in a lib'ry is a shelf. Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th' shelf is th' main thing.
FINLEY PETER DUNNE
Mr. Dooley Says