Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Libraries

My books are my tools, and the greater their variety and perfection the greater the help to my literary work.
Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author

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

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet

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 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

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist

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

My library was dukedom large enough.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher

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

A library implies an act of faith.
Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist

Your library is your portrait.
Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher

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

Most homes valued at over $250,000 have a library. That should tell us something.
Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker

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

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

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

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

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist

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

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

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist

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

Your library is your paradise.
Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar

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

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

An hour spent in the library is worth a month in the laboratory.
Unknown

A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.
Orson Scott Card (b.1951) American Author

Without libraries what have we?. We have no past and no future.
Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer

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

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *