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
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
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
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
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
Your library is your portrait.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
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
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
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 Novelist, Playwright, Essayist, Translator, Poet
In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
—Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist
There are seventy million books in American libraries, but the one you want is always out.
—Thomas Masson (1866–1934) American Journalist, Humorist, Author
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
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
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are those that other folks have lent me.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.
—Orson Scott Card (b.1951) American Author, Critic, Political Activist
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’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
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist