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Food for the soul.
[Lat., Nutrimentum spiritus.]
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: inscription on the Berlin Royal Library
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The medicine chest of the soul.
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: inscription of a library
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The richest minds need not large libraries.
Author: Amos Bronson Alcott
Source: Table Talk (bk. I, Learning-Books)
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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.
Author: Francis Bacon
Source: Libraries
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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.
Author: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
Source: The Elder Brother (act I, sc. 2, l. 177)
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A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of
shadows.
Author: Henry Ward Beecher
Source: Star Papers--Oxford--Bodleian Library
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All round the room my silent servants wait,
My friends in every season, bright and dim.
Author: Barry Cornwall (pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter)
Source: My Books
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A great library contains the diary of the human race.
Author: Rev. George Dawson
Source: Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library
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It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by
getting a great library.
Author: Thomas Fuller
Source: Holy and Profane States--Of Books (maxim 1)
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Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were
only the history of pinheads.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
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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.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
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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 (used pseudonym Elia),
Author: Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia)
Source: Essays of Elia--Oxford in the Vacation
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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.
Author: J.G. Saxe
Source: The Library
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'Tis well to borrow from the good and the great;
'Tis wise to learn: 'tis God-like to create!
Author: J.G. Saxe
Source: The Library
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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.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Titus Andronicus (Titus at IV, i)
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A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of
diabolical knowledge.
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Source: The Rivals (act I, sc. 2)
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Shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.
Author: Bayard Taylor
Source: The Poet's Journal--Third Evening
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Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe
Where every book is thy epitaph.
Author: Henry Vaughan ("The Silurist")
Source: on Sir Thomas Bodley's library
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The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
Author: Carl Rowan
Source: None
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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.
Author: Louis Macneice
Source: None
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
Author: Barbara Tuchman
Source: None
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The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: None
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The quantity of books in a person's library, is often a cloud of witnesses to the ignorance of the owner.
Author: Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna
Source: None
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Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
Author: Ray Bradbury
Source: None
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