A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.
—Orson Scott Card (b.1951) American Author
Most homes valued at over $250,000 have a library. That should tell us something.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world—a place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward.
—Barack Obama (b.1961) American Head of State, Academic, Politician, Author
A library implies an act of faith.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Here with hosts of friends
I revel who can never change or chill;
Though the fleeting years and seasons
they are fair and faithful still!
Kings and courtiers, knights and jesters,
belles and beaux of far away,
Meet and mingle with the beauties
and the heroes of to-day.
All the lore of ancient sages,
all the light of souls divine,
All the music, wit and wisdom
of the gray old world is mine,
Garnered here where fall the shadows
of the mystic pineland’s gloom!
And I sway an airy kingdom
from my little book-lined room.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) Canadian Novelist
From this slender beginning I have gradually formed a numerous and select library, the foundation of all my works, and the best comfort of my life, both at home and abroad.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Your library is your paradise.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
My library was dukedom large enough.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
My Alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
Libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we’re the most religious of people, America’s innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
—Barack Obama (b.1961) American Head of State, Academic, Politician, Author
When an old man dies, a library burns down.
—African Proverb
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Everything you need for your better future and success has already been written. And guess what? It’s all available. All you have to do is go to the library.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
A man’s library is a sort of harem.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
An hour spent in the library is worth a month in the laboratory.
—Unknown
Borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
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.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
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.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-born British Playwright, Poet, Elected Rep
If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room; next a dormitory; and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn’t use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Political Scientist, Humorist
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
—Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American Public Servant, Journalist, Author, Columnist
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
He loved this street [42nd Street], not for the people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
There are seventy million books in American libraries, but the one you want is always out.
—Thomas Masson (1866–1934) American Journalist, Humorist, Author
A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
A library is where you meet fascinating characters you never forget.
—Judy Blume (b.1938) American Author
A library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a man may take counsel with all who have been wise, and great, and good, and glorious among the men that have gone before him.
—George Dawson (1821–76) English Nonconformist Preacher, Activist
Let us pity those poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses! Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the price of what his tobacco and beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and, indeed, among all that are struggling up from nothing to something, is that of owning, and constantly adding to a library of good books. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a young man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Your library is your portrait.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
Without libraries what have we?. We have no past and no future.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
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, and survives them.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
What is more important in a library than anything else—than everything else—is the fact that it exists.
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) American Poet, Dramatist
Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
My books are my tools, and the greater their variety and perfection the greater the help to my literary work.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again—for, like true friends, they will never fail us—never cease to instruct—never cloy—Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
A library is a path to the future—find yours there.
—Mary Higgins Clark (1929–2020) American Suspense Novelist
The library, with its tall bays and overhanging gallery, looked east and was already rather dark. Harriet found it restful.
—Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) British Crime Writer
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.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
A library is but the soul’s burying ground. It is a land of shadows.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another: we give no offense to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence; each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
You’ve got to love libraries. You’ve got to love books. You’ve got to love poetry. You’ve got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
A few Books well chosen, and well made use of will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian