quotations about libraries
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
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY
My Reading Life
A great library contains the diary of the human race.
GEORGE DAWSON
Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library
A good library is a great kingdom.
MAGLIABECCHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
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
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
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
Library
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
RICHARD ARMOUR
Light Armour
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
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
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
Libraries are not a cost. They are an investment.
STEVE KRAFT
"Libraries need to embrace change to remain vital", Guelph Today, June 12, 2016
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
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