quotations about libraries
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
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 could show you everything if you knew where to look.
PAT CONROY
My Reading Life
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Dreamtigers
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
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
Library
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
RICHARD ARMOUR
Light 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
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
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
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
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
Libraries are not a cost. They are an investment.
STEVE KRAFT
"Libraries need to embrace change to remain vital", Guelph Today, June 12, 2016
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 library contains the diary of the human race.
GEORGE DAWSON
Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library
A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.
SHELBY FOOTE
attributed, North Carolina Libraries
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
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
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