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
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
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
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
The richest minds need not large libraries.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
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
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 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
Library
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
RICHARD ARMOUR
Light Armour
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
An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.
STEPHEN FRY
The Liar
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
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 good library is a great kingdom.
MAGLIABECCHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
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
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
When you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
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