The dust and odour of ancient libraries, the gloom of those crypts of literature, have… all the charm of freshest images and freshest poetry. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)
The library lets you borrow the beauty and keep the knowledge. – Author Unknown
What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists. – Archibald MacLeish, "The Premise of Meaning," American Scholar, 5 June 1
Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul. – Library at Thebes, inscription over the door
In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks. – Henry Rollins
A library is thought in cold storage. – Herbert Samuel
Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. – Lady Bird Johnson
As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her. – Erma Bombeck
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth. – John Lubbock
To those with ears to hear, libraries are really very noisy places. On their shelves we hear the captured voices of the centuries-old conversation that makes up our civilization. – Timothy Healy
My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast Table
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. – Cicero
Libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed may bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use. – William Dyer
A great library contains the diary of the human race. – George Mercer Dawson
I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air. – Sholem Asch
My books are very few, but then the world is before me – a library open to all – from which poverty of purse cannot exclude me – in which the meanest and most paltry volume is sure to furnish something to amuse, if not to instruct and improve. – Joseph Howe, 1824
I always imagined that Paradise would be a kind of library. – Jorge Luis Borges, translated from Spanish
Libraries and books are a big part of my life. Like a lot of inwardly drawn young people, I spent a lot of time in libraries…. There were no parents there, no one I knew, and the solitude was a great relief. – Henry Rollins, “Empowerment Through Libraries,” November 2013, LAWeekly [Swoon!
To build up a library is to create a life. – Carlos MarÃa DomÃnguez
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. – Andrew Carnegie
