Library Quotes - Page 5

• 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

  Book, Drunk, Might

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.37, Atlântico Press

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• Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Teaching, Learning

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 18 Apr. 1775)

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• Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Doors, Closing Doors, Closed Doors

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• Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep.

  Edwin Paxton Hood

  Book, Company You Keep, Careful

  Edwin Paxton Hood (1851). “Self-education”, p.65

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• A library is a growing organism.

  S. R. Ranganathan

  Growing, Organisms

  S. R. Ranganathan (1950). “Colon Classification”

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• Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.

  John F. Kennedy

  Book, Writing, Welcome

  Saturday Review, p. 44, October 29, 1960.

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• While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, Book, Names

  "A Man Without a Country". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (pp. 102-103), September 15, 2005.

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• 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

  Book, World, Purses

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• Book - what they make a movie out of for television.

  Leonard Louis Levinson

  Book, Style, Television

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• And the smell of the library was always the same - the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup.'

  Peter Ackroyd

  Smell, Clothes, Creating

  1987 Chatterton, ch.5.

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• 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 C. Lichtenberg

  Cases, Humans, Human Wisdom

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook K 37, 1799.

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• The time was when a library was very like a museum and the librarian a mouser among dusty books. The time is when the library is a school and the librarian in the highest sense a teacher.

  Melvil Dewey

  Teacher, Book, School

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• 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

  Years, Long, Tree

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas Moore (1833). “The works: With a biographical sketch”, p.10

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• Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself! (from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)

  Russell T Davies

  Book, Knowledge, Doctors

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• My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.

  Rita Dove

  Two, Smell, Childhood

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• We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.

  John Lubbock

  Travel, Book, Earth

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• What in the world would we do without our libraries?

  Katharine Hepburn

  Kids, World

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• Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Healing, Hands

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.311, OUP Oxford

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• My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

  David Mamet

  Chicago, Alma Mater, Public Library

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• I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt, If one be better with them or without,-- Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed, Knows the high art of what and how to read.

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Art, Doubt, Use

  John Godfrey Saxe (1871). “Poems”, p.297

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• Libraries are the future of reading.

  Courtney Milan

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

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• The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.

  William Osler

  Book, Thinking, Dragons

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• Seventy million books in America's libraries, but the one you want to read is always out.

  Thomas Lansing Masson

  Book, America, Want

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• Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  World, Deals, Constructs

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• The reason why borrowed books are seldom returned, is that it is easier to retain books themselves than what is inside of them.

  Gilles Menage

  Book, Reason Why, Easier

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