Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

Food for the soul.

The medicine chest of the soul.

The richest minds need not large libraries.

Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

That place that does contain My books, the best companions, is to me A glorious court, where hourly I converse With the old sages and philosophers; And sometimes, for variety, I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; Calling their victories, if unjustly got, Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy, Deface their ill-placed statues.

A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.

All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim.

A great library contains the diary of the human race.

It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by getting a great library.

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.

The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves.

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 labours 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 ,

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.

'Tis well to borrow from the good and the great; 'Tis wise to learn: 'tis God-like to create!

Some book there is that she desires to see. Which is it, girl, of these? Open them, boy. But thou art deeper read and better skilled: Come and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens Reveal the damned contriver of this deed.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

Shelved around us lie The mummied authors.

Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe Where every book is thy epitaph.

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.

Some on commission, some for the love of learning, some because they have nothing better to do or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears.