Libraries Quotes

Quotes tagged as "libraries" Showing 61-90 of 652
Walter Savage Landor
“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”
Walter Savage Landor, Pericles and Aspasia

Libba Bray
“Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don’t get upset when you don’t send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you’re late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn’t allow that torch to be extinguished.”
Libba Bray

John Jakes
“I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.”
John Jakes, Homeland

Margaret  Rogerson
“The library possessed a life of its own, had become greater than Cornelius had ever intended. For these were not ordinary books the libraries kept. They were knowledge, given life. Wisdom, given voice. They sang when starlight streamed through the library's windows. They felt pain and suffered heartbreak. Sometimes they were sinister, grotesque- but so was the world outside. And that made the world no less worth fighting for, because wherever there was darkness, there was also so much light.”
Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

Polly Horvath
“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 or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper.”
Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures

Mackenzi Lee
“The room is warm and smells like dust, and just the presence of so many books makes it easier to breathe. It’s remarkable how being around books, even those you’ve never read, can have a calming effect, like walking into a crowded party and finding it full of people you know.”
Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

Patrick Rothfuss
“There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.”
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“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.”
Rebecca Maizel, Infinite Days

“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Scott Douglas
“There was the smell of old books, a smell that has a way of making all libraries seem the same. Some say that smell is asbestos. ”
Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

William Shakespeare
“Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”
William Shakespeare

Trenton Lee Stewart
“Did the men steal the papers?" Reynie asked, fearing her response.
No, because they are fools," Sophie said bitterly. "They demanded to see the papers, and when I did not answer fast enough -- they were very frightening, you see -- they hurt me so that I was not awake. . . . When I opened my eyes they were still trying to find the papers. They did not understand how we organize the library, you see. They were angry and creating a bad mess. . . . The police were coming and the men decided they must leave. I shouted at them as they left: 'It is a free and public library! All you had to do was ask!”
Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

“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 damaged videotape. Either they are fucked up and their priorities are fucked up or I am fucked up and my priorities are fucked up. Because I am me, I think it is them.”
Don Borchert, Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library

R. David Lankes
“To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community.”
R. David Lankes

Scott Douglas
“I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.”
Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

Henry Rollins
“In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.”
Henry Rollins

Nicholas A. Basbanes
“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,
Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.
Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted.
Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy,
Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution.
Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not.
When at last he goeth to his final punishment,
Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
[attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain]”
Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

Jo Walton
“It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.”
Jo Walton

“Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Jackson Pearce
“I like libraries. It's a comfort that knowledge can be save for so long. That what we learn can be passed on.”
Jackson Pearce, Sisters Red

Thomas Jefferson
“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”
Thomas Jefferson

Charles M. Schulz
“I fall in love with any girl who smells of library paste.”
Charles Schulz

Doris Kearns Goodwin
“I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wait Till Next Year

Paul Acampora
“Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It's almost worse.”
Paul Acampora, I Kill the Mockingbird

Julia Walton
“I like libraries, if for no other reason than they give homeless people a place to hang out. There's something nice about the way you're never too old to go into one, but it still makes you feel the way it did when you were small.”
Julia Walton, Words on Bathroom Walls

Charlaine Harris
“I've got libraries in my blood.”
Charlaine Harris, Dead Over Heels

Marilyn Johnson
“I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.”
Marilyn Johnson, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

Alan             Moore
“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.”
Alan Moore

Robert Jackson Bennett
“Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves.... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.
She felt overwhelmed. It was--she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library--a lot like being in love for the first time.”
Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Barbara Pym
“Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.”
Barbara Pym, No Fond Return of Love