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? – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man should have a library. The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. – William E.A. Axon, October 1867

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

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