LIBRARY QUOTES V

quotations about libraries

I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dreamtigers

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


A great library contains the diary of the human race.

GEORGE DAWSON

Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library


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 ... 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

Tags: Francis Bacon


A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.

PAT CONROY

My Reading Life


Libraries build communities. They are centers of learning and entertainment.

CHERYL COSART

"Friends of the Santee Library launch fund raising campaign for new library", The Californian, May 18, 2016


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

Tags: Daniel Handler


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

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


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


When you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian.

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

slogan


If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.

ALBERTO MANGUEL

The Library at Night


Libraries are not a cost. They are an investment.

STEVE KRAFT

"Libraries need to embrace change to remain vital", Guelph Today, June 12, 2016


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

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Library
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.

RICHARD ARMOUR

Light Armour

Tags: Richard Armour


God hath given to mankind a common library, His creatures; to every man a proper book, himself being an abridgment of all others. If thou read with understanding, it will make thee a great master of philosophy, and a true servant of the divine Author: if thou but barely read, it will make thee thine own wise man and the Author's fool.

FRANCIS QUARLES

Enchiridion

Tags: Francis Quarles


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


A great public library, in its catalogue and its physical disposition of its books on shelves, is the monument of literary genres.

ROBERT MELANCON

attributed, World Literature Today, spring 1982


A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

SHELBY FOOTE

attributed, North Carolina Libraries


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

Tags: Kurt Vonnegut


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

Tags: Finley Peter Dunne