quotations about libraries
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
CICERO
ad familiares
Shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.
BAYARD TAYLOR
The Poet's Journal, Third Evening
I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Poisonwood Bible
A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
The Rivals
Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.
JOHN WATERS
Role Models
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Pleasures of Life
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Libraries are the wardrobes of our literature, whence men, properly informed, might bring something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.
GEORGE DYER
History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge; Including Notices Relating to the Founders and Eminent Men
When in doubt, go to the library.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
A good library is an anchor to keep a young man from roving, and a helm to aid an old man to gain the greatest possible benefit from what remains of the breeze.
WILLIAM D'ARCY HALEY
Words for the Workers: In a Series of Lectures to Workingmen, Mechanics, and Apprentices
Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.
JOHN JAKES
Homeland
My library was dukedom large enough.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
Within the sacred walls of libraries we find the best thoughts, the purest feelings, and the most exalted imaginings of our race.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
My library is an archive of longings.
SUSAN SONTAG
As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
The smell of the library was always the same -- the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as "the steam of the social soup."
PETER ACKROYD
Chatterton
In all, libraries help build a strong and vibrant community by literacy improvements, by connecting people and ideas, helping with workforce development and by helping the development of a community identity.
P. D. MOWBRAY, JR.
"Libraries are more than books", Roanoke Times, May 19, 2016
A library is a foundation and a fountain of knowledge. It is a friend to sustainable development.
MACHELE KAFUMU MAISA
"Tanzania: When Learning Environment Improves Performance", Tanzania Daily News, June 16, 2016
What a place to be is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours ... were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets.
CHARLES LAMB
Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
The establishment of a library is an ideal benchmark for serving the society.
BIPIN RAI
"There's now a library for the homeless in Delhi", Deccan Chronicle, June 6, 2016