Library quotes

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He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.

In one sphere above all others, Anne Boleyn still had the power to influence him, and that was in the case of church reform. Anne was a passionate and sincere evangelical, the owner of a library of controversial reformist literature, and she was sympathetic to radical and even Lutheran ideas.

Few things would gratify me as much as a rediscovered respect for things belonging to others. Not abusing the property of others (or that of the community) is one of the ways in which we respect others. It is an essential part of being considerate guests, no matter where we are: in an airplane, in a friend's home, in a movie theater, in a doctor's office, in a public library, or in a public square.

The grim, grand African forests are like a great library, in which, so far, I can do little more than look at the pictures, although I am now busily learning the alphabet of their language, so that I may some day read what these pictures mean.

The dog was cold and in pain. But being only a dog it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself.

Albert Payson Terhune

Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.

Alberto Manguel

I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

Nag Hammadi library

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.'

Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library.

Luther Standing Bear

You get all sorts of people in the library, and the librarian gets it all...

Terry Pratchett

Jack Benny really liked my book. I know because he called me up from the library and told me.

Research in statistical theory and technique is necessarily mathematical, scholarly, and abstract in character, requiring some degree of leisure and detachment, and access to a good mathematical and statistical library.

Harold Hotelling

People may go to the library looking mainly for information, but they find each other there.

Robert D. Putnam

I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice.

I am the one whom you have reflected upon,
and you have scorned me.
I am unlearned,
and they learn from me.
I am the one whom you have despised,
and you reflect upon me.
I am the one whom you have hidden from,
and you appear to me.
But whenever you hide yourselves,
I myself will appear.
For [whenever] you [appear],
I myself [will hide] from you.

Nag Hammadi library

The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.

Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.

Walter Benjamin

You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library. She pointed to the shelf opposite. Over there was Catch-22, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.

This is why I can't be with Levi. Because I'm the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight-and Levi can't even read.

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

For many are the pleasant forms which exist in
numerous sins,
and incontinencies,
and disgraceful passions,
and fleeting pleasures, which (men) embrace until they become sober
and go up to their resting-place. And they will find me there,
and they will live,
and they will not die again.

Nag Hammadi library

In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world.

Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!

George MacDonald

Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day.