quotations about libraries
My pen is my harp and my lyre; my library is my garden and my orchard.
JUDAH HA-LEVI
attributed, Life's Little Book of Big Jewish Advice
The richest minds need not large libraries.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Libraries tend to occupy a sacred space in modern culture. People adore them.... The grandest libraries, built like monstrous cathedrals, are particularly beloved. It ought to follow, then, that the ultimate library--an infinite library--would be revered as a utopia, especially in an age where data is seen as its own currency. But libraries have a dark side in the cultural imagination.... In the real world, the dawn of the written word incited the same kinds of anxieties that accompany any new technology that reorders people's relationship with information.... The evolution of such fears and perceptions as they apply to information systems--from books, to machines, to artificial intelligence, and beyond--is perhaps a natural one. At the very least, it's predictable. Books are, after all, technology.
ADRIENNE LAFRANCE
"The Human Fear of Total Knowledge", The Atlantic, June 3, 2016
Great libraries of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats--that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners!
ISAAC DISRAELI
Curiosities of Literature
Libraries collect the works of genius of every language and every age.
GEORGE BANCROFT
History of the Colonization of the United States
As a breed, local and community librarians ceaselessly challenge the constraints of isolation.
FELICITY HAYES-MCCOY
"The Library at the Edge of the World author: libraries are a community's heart", The Irish Times, June 8, 2016
Living in a library is the realization of liberal education, the feverish road to getting more from college than a degree.
DOUGLAS M. STEHLE
"Information Literacy as Liberal Education", Musings, Meanderings, and Monsters, Too: Essays on Academic Librarianship
Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
SAUL BELLOW
"Him with His Foot in His Mouth", Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day.
STUART DYBEK
The Coast of Chicago
It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA
The Historian
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
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
An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.
STEPHEN FRY
The Liar
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
My library is a friend of a thousand years.
KYO-SYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.
ANNE HERBERT
"The Next Whole Earth Catalog", 1980
I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me -- nature's not what I cling to. I cling to books.
EMILY WING SMITH
Back When You Were Easier to Love
A good library is a great kingdom.
MAGLIABECCHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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