#library

In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#librarian #libraries #library #dreams

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#emotions #library #age

Libraries offer, for free, the wisdom of the ages--and sages--and, simply put, there's something for everyone inside. ↗

— Laura Bush

#palestine-public-library #quote #texas #age

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#age

He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he'd spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library - hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of ... ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#dreams #library #shy #age

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn’t learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God’s injunction and Adam’s loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. “Hurry,” they say, “he’ll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime. ↗

— Verlyn Klinkenborg

#library #reading #change

There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends—always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that. ↗

— J. Donald Adams

#friends #library #mood #truth #change

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#library #literature #reading #words #death

Please bury me in the library With a dozen long-stemmed proses ↗

— J. Patrick Lewis

#death #library #reading #death

That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library. ↗

— Aphra Behn

#reading #faith