Quotes about libraries

"There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends-always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that."

Adams, J. Donald on libraries   

"We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin."

Ball, Hugo on libraries   

"A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows."

Beecher, Henry Ward on libraries   

"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one."

Birrell, Augustine on libraries
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"The true university of these days is a collection of books."

Carlyle, Thomas on libraries
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"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life."

Cousins, Norman on libraries
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"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it."

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan on libraries   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A man's library is a sort of harem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
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"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries   

"Your library is your paradise."

Erasmus, Desiderius on libraries
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"Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed."

Greer, Germaine on libraries   

"A library implies an act of faith."

Hugo, Victor on libraries   

"The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought."

Irving, Washington on libraries   

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."

Johnson, Samuel on libraries
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"It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on libraries   

"What is more important in a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists."

Macleish, Archibald on libraries   

"Some on commission, some for the love of learning, some because they have nothing better to do or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears."

Macneice, Louis on libraries   

"My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

Malcolm X on libraries
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"There are seventy million books in American libraries, but the one you want is always out."

Masson, Thomas L. on libraries
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"The quantity of books in a person's library, is often a cloud of witnesses to the ignorance of the owner."

Oxenstierna, Count Axel Gustafsson on libraries   

"The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history."

Rowan, Carl on libraries
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"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"

Ruskin, John on libraries   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"My library was dukedom large enough."

Shakespeare, William on libraries
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"Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last."

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley on libraries   

"I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander."

Smith, Alexander on libraries
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"To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents."

Tuchman, Barbara on libraries   

"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

Unknown, Source on libraries   

"An hour spent in the library is worth a month in the laboratory."

Unknown, Source on libraries
3 fans of this quote   

"Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age."

Whittier, John Greenleaf on libraries