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
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
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
Libraries collect the works of genius of every language and every age.
GEORGE BANCROFT
History of the Colonization of the United States
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
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
An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.
STEPHEN FRY
The Liar
My library is a friend of a thousand years.
KYO-SYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Dreamtigers
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
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
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
Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe
Where every book is thy epitaph.
HENRY VAUGHAN
attributed, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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
It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA
The Historian