#library

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#library #life

They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#alexandria #caliph #intolerance #library #men

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book buyers for today’s dollars, especially when it’s obvious that the source in question doesn’t have any more dollars to give you. ↗

— Courtney Milan

#economy #libraries #library #money #readingy

To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of the past and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. I was motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others. ↗

— Scott Douglas

#library #library-books #quiet-please #motivational

I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#beach #california #groves #libraries #library

Books are only half our job ; the other half is human nature. ↗

— Mary Virginia Provines

#human-nature #job #librarians #library #people

Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#gevaisa #library #words #nature

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective. ↗

— Robert Musil

#library #perspective

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. ↗

— Elizabeth Kostova

#home #library #walking

Say what you had to about Ethan, but the boy filled a library very, very well. Okay—arguably, that wasn’t the only thing he filled out well, but let’s stay on track. ↗

— Chloe Neill

#library