LIBRARY QUOTES IV

quotations about libraries

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


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

Tags: Amos Bronson Alcott


A good library is a great kingdom.

MAGLIABECCHI

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


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 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

Tags: Isaac D'Israeli


An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

STEPHEN FRY

The Liar

Tags: ideas


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


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

RICHARD ARMOUR

Light Armour

Tags: Richard Armour


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


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


Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Pericles and Aspasia

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


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


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


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

Tags: Saul Bellow


I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dreamtigers

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


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 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