I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
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Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
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Volunteers Many will be shocked to find, When the day of judgement nears, That there's a special place in Heaven Set aside for volunteers. Furnished with big recliners, Satin Couches and footstools, Where ther are no committee chairmen, Nor yard sale or rest area coffee to serve. No library duty or bulletin assembly, There will be nothing to print and staple. Not one thing to fold and mail, Telephone lists will be outlawed. But a finger snap will bring Cool drinks and gourmet dinners And rare treats fit for a king. You ask, Who'll serve these privileged few And work for all the're worth? Why, all those who reaped the benifits, And not once volunteered on Earth.
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I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
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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.
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A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas-a place where history comes to life.
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Majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But -- like other precious, sacred things, such as the home and the family -- it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And -- since women are a majority of the population -- we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.
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A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas a place where history comes to life.
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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
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I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.
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Who can tell who will be the President a year from now? -- John F. Kennedy, speaking to the president of Harvard about why he did not want to delay signing documents relating to a future JFK Presidential Library, 2 October 1963.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
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My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
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I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.
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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.
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When an old man dies, a library burns down.
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Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
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If we should swap a good library for a second-rate stump speech and not ask for boot, it would be thoroughly in tune with our hearts. For deep...
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A million flies can't be wrong - Eat shit.
Seen under it written in a different colour:
A billion humans can't be wrong - Don't eat shit
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I do not mean to suggest that our handsome, newly enlarged library is to be a headquarters of busy bookworms, old and young, routinely absorbing knowledge by the hour while birds sing outside and the Mets fight it out for last place in the National League. On the contrary, a good library is a joyful place where the imagination roams free, and life is actively enriched.
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Ya see, the sad thing about a guy like you is that in 50 years your gonna start doing some thinkin of your own and you're gonna realize that there are two certainties in life: one: don't do that. And two: you dropped a 150 grand on an education that you could have gotten with a $1.50 worth of late charges at the public library.
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A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
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Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
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Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.
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Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed; it is the same as it has always been, since Callimachus administered the great library in Alexandrea.
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If truth is beauty, then how come no one has their hair done in a library?
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Speeches are for the younger men who are going places. And I'm not going anyplace except six feet under the floor of that little chapel adjoining the museum and library at Abilene
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Life is a library owned by an author. It has a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.
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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.
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