In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

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...

I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education...

The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books ‘any old time they have a mind to,’ libraries will...

I walked inside and paused for a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and dust—the perfumes of knowledge.

Her library is a meeting place for all who love books. They discuss matters of the world and matters of the spirit.

Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who...

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.’ It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature… books that distinctly commend what is wrong,...

She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.

Congratulations on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to...

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.

You don’t spend your life hanging around books without learning a thing or two.

But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was still a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a...

Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I’m always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.

Who’s to say what a ‘literary life’ is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don’t need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time. Nightclubs are great literary research centers....

Mostrare la propria libreria è come far entrare un estraneo nell’intimità. È come raccontare dei propri flirt. Una cosa da evitare.

Now look,” snapped the Dean, “we’ve searched everywhere for a decent library on this island. There simply isn’t one! It’s ridiculous. How is anyone supposed to get anything done?

The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.

To build up a library is to create a life. It’s never just a random collection of books.

I do not understand people who will lustily throw $40,000 at the shiny red automobile of their choice, but well up with tears and become outraged when they are asked to pay $5 for a...

It was a common complaint amongst the Arts students that their library was in dire need of refurbishment. To call the old building shabby chic was being kind. It didn’t have automated stacks or self-service...

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions,...

The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don’t, halfway...

Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It’s almost worse.

Library? That sounded reasonable. As my thoughts revolved around my days surrounded by books, something miraculous happened. My anger subsided. It ebbed away as the thoughts of books, pages, and comfort entered my head.

When reading you have the opportunity to pause for thought & spark your imagination. It develops intellect. Nothing more threatening to a politician than a well read working class.

You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.

The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one — at least, no male person — ever consulted works of reference...

fires”!

People are often dismissive of librarians and libraries….But isn’t that where the best stories are kept? Hidden away on the library bookshelves, lost and forgotten, waiting, waiting, until someone like me comes along, and wants...

In Bibliotheken fühlt man sich wie in Gegenwart eines großen Kapitals, das geräuschlos unberechenbare Zinsen spendet.

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the...

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.

My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my...

The old man was peering intently at the shelves. ‘I’ll have to admit that he’s a very competent scholar.’Isn’t he just a librarian?’ Garion asked, ‘somebody who looks after books?’That’s where all the rest of...

In the enterprise, you already have all these libraries, but a lot of midsized companies want smaller automated tape products. The PX500 series plays into that market — the lower end.

…bookstores, libraries… they’re the closest thing I have to a church.

Library-denigrators, pay heed: suggesting that the Internet is a viable substitute for libraries is like saying porn could replace your wife.

It’s still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.

Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.” Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal. New York Times, 10/16/2011

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge,...