110 Library Quotes

Libraries have long been sanctuaries of knowledge, wisdom, and imagination. They serve as havens where the past meets the present, and the curious mind can explore endless realms of possibility. In the spirit of celebrating these bastions of learning, we have curated a collection of the top 110 library quotes. Whether you’re an avid reader, a lifelong learner, or simply someone who cherishes the silent company of books, these quotes will resonate with your love for libraries. Dive in and discover words that capture the essence of what makes libraries so special.

1. “A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.” - Germaine Greer

2. “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” - Mark Twain

3. “You see, I don't belive that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, that has been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.” - Monty Python

4. “Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

5. “People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” - Saul Bellow

6. “The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.” - Terry Pratchett

7. “Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills!” - Charles Ogden

8. “You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.” - Elizabeth Kostova

9. “A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.” - Lemony Snicket

10. “What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.” - Harold Howe

11. “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.” - Carl Sagan

12. “[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the censor.[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]” - John F. Kennedy

13. “Libraries are our friends.” - Neil Gaiman

14. “There was the smell of old books, a smell that has a way of making all libraries seem the same. Some say that smell is asbestos. ” - Scott Douglas

15. “I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.” - Scott Douglas

16. “If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. ” - Alberto Manguel

17. “Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.” - Alberto Manguel

18. “The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.” - Alberto Manguel

19. “Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.” - William Shakespeare

20. “I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.” - Roger Zelazny

21. “A great library doesn't have to be big or beautiful. It doesn't have to have the best facilities or the most efficient staff or the most users. A great library provides. It is enmeshed in the life of a community in a way that makes it indispensable. A great library is one nobody notices because it is always there, and always has what people need.” - Vicki Myron

22. “The library is the worst group of people ever assembled in history. They're mean, conniving, rude, and extremely well-read, which makes them dangerous.” - Leslie Knope

23. “Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.” - Walter Savage Landor

24. “There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.” - Patrick Rothfuss

25. “Every reader his or her book.Every book its reader.” - S.R. Ranganathan

26. “Did the men steal the papers?" Reynie asked, fearing her response.No, because they are fools," Sophie said bitterly. "They demanded to see the papers, and when I did not answer fast enough -- they were very frightening, you see -- they hurt me so that I was not awake. . . . When I opened my eyes they were still trying to find the papers. They did not understand how we organize the library, you see. They were angry and creating a bad mess. . . . The police were coming and the men decided they must leave. I shouted at them as they left: 'It is a free and public library! All you had to do was ask!” - Trenton Lee Stewart

27. “You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.” - Ray Bradbury

28. “Should he give free reign to his desires, the bibliomaniac can ruin his life along with the lives of his loved ones. He'll often take better care of his books than of his own health; he'll spend more on fiction than he does on food; he'll be more interested in his library than in his relationships, and, since few people are prepared to live in a place where every available surface is covered with piles of books, he'll often find himself alone, perhaps in the company of a neglected and malnourished cat. When he dies, all but forgotten, his body might fester for days before a curious neighbor grows concerned about the smell.” - Mikita Brottman

29. “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

30. “My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

31. “anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.” - Virginia Woolf

32. “To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.” - Carlos María Domínguez

33. “Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” - Thomas Jefferson

34. “It's still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.” - Neil Gaiman

35. “He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.” - Terry Pratchett

36. “The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.” - Augustine Birrell

37. “Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” - Ray Bradbury

38. “Epics are never written about libraries. They exist on whim; it depends on if the conquering army likes to read.” - Patricia A. McKillip

39. “This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it & the soul of those who read it & lived it & dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down it's pages, it's spirit grows & strengthens. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands, a new spirit...” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

40. “From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.” - Alberto Manguel

41. “For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not.When at last he goeth to his final punishment, Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.[attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain]” - Nicholas A. Basbanes

42. “To ask why we need libraries at all, when there is so much information available elsewhere, is about as sensible as asking if roadmaps are necessary now that there are so very many roads."[American Libraries Magazine, May 28, 2009]” - Jon Bing

43. “About the library," he whispered. He took out the pencil stub from his pocket and poised it over the page."Will you write like Mr. Blake or like yourself?" I inquired.He wrote and whispered the words aloud as he did. "I am in the library. It smells like old stuff.""It smells familiar," I suggested. "It smells like words." Because his left side was to me, I couldn't easily take his hand to write."Books are boring," James said as he wrote."They line the walls like a thousand leather doorways to be opened into worlds unknown," I offered.He thought about this and then wrote with a smile, "I hate books.” - Laura Whitcomb

44. “Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don’t get upset when you don’t send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you’re late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn’t allow that torch to be extinguished.” - Libba Bray

45. “Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the better.” - Sidney Sheldon

46. “We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries.” - Marilyn Johnson

47. “I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.” - Marilyn Johnson

48. “They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?” - Sara Sheridan

49. “Her library is a meeting place for all who love books. They discuss matters of the world and matters of the spirit.” - Jeanette Winter

50. “I grew up in libraries, and I hope I've learned never to take them for granted. A thriving library is the heart of its community, providing access to information and educational opportunities, bringing people together, leveling the playing field, and archiving our history.” - Josie Brown

51. “A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.” - Alan Dershowitz

52. “Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.” - Francis Bacon

53. “Library? That sounded reasonable. As my thoughts revolved around my days surrounded by books, something miraculous happened. My anger subsided. It ebbed away as the thoughts of books, pages, and comfort entered my head.” - Rebecca Maizel

54. “The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. 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.— Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475” - Norman Cousins

55. “...it's appalling to remember that the entire Oxford University Library was sold for scrap in the mid-1500s. Nor was that situation unique to Oxford, as libraries were deconstructed throughout the land.” - Owen Gingerich

56. “The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.” - David Eddings

57. “The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper.” - Polly Horvath

58. “Who’s to say what a ‘literary life’ is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don’t need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time. Nightclubs are great literary research centers. So is Ibiza!” - Roman Payne

59. “I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.” - Virginia Woolf

60. “I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.” - Ray Bradbury

61. “I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn’t want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it’s like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there’s so much to look at and read. And it’s far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don’t have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on—well, what if you don’t like those books?” - Ray Bradbury

62. “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

63. “A teenager deserves a library that recognizes reality. He needs an information source and study area that does not impose arbitrary, crippling rules on him. His library should recognize that dignity and silence are not prior requisites to learning […] He would like, needs, and deserves for other people to stop trying to protect him and allow him the right to choose information for himself […] Most of all the teenager needs people in libraries to recognize and accept him as a respectable human being.” - Anne Osborn

64. “Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.” - Seth Godin

65. “Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.” - Robin Sloan

66. “It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,” he said. “Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.” Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal. New York Times, 10/16/2011” - Russell Grandinetti

67. “Εκείνη η τέλεια γαλήνη στη ζωή που δεν μπορεί να βρεθεί παρά μόνο στην απόσυρση, σε ένα καλό φίλο, σε μια καλή βιβλιοθήκη.” - Behn Aphra

68. “Οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να χάσουν τις ζωές τους στις βιβλιοθήκες. Θα πρέπει να προειδοποιούνται.” - Saul Bellow

69. “Μη δανείζετε ποτέ βιβλία σας σε φίλους. Κανένας δεν τα επιστρέφει. Τα μοναδικά βιβλία που έχουν μείνει στη βιβλιοθήκη μου είναι όσα μου εδάνεισαν κατά καιρούς οι φίλοι μου.” - Anatole France

70. “Libraries have always been there for me. Of course I'll stand up for them.” - Marilyn Johnson

71. “Βιβλιοθήκη είναι σκέψη σε κατάψυξη” - Viscount Herbert Samuel

72. “Μια βιβλιοθήκη είναι ένα νοσοκομείο του πνεύματος” - Αιγυπτιακό γνωμικό

73. “Πολύ λίγα βιβλία χρειάζονται για να είναι κανείς επιστήμων και ακόμη λιγώτερα για να είναι σοφός” - Balzac Honore de

74. “Civilized nations build libraries; lands that have lost their soul close them down.” - Toby Forward

75. “Book lovers love books!" her mother announced. "There's romance about the books- even having them seems to have a kind of excitement."from Mr. Linden's Library by Walter Dean Myers” - Chris Van Allsburg

76. “What is more important to a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists."[The Premise Of Meaning, American Scholar; Washington, DC, June 5, 1972]” - Archibald MacLeish

77. “She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.” - Catherynne M. Valente

78. “In the libraryI search for a good book.We have many books,says Mrs. Rose, the librarian,and ALL of them are good.Of course she says that. It's her job.But do I want to read about TrucksTrains and Transport? Or evenHorsesHouses and Hyenas?In the fiction cornerthere are pink boksfull of princessesand girls who want to be princessesand black booksabout bad boysand brave boysand brawny boys.Where is the bookabout a girlwhose poems don't rhymeand whose Granny is fading?Pearl, says Mrs. Rose, the bell has rung.I go back to classempty-handedempty headedempty-hearted.” - Sally Murphy

79. “She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time. And she was wonderfully unhinged.” - Gary Paulsen

80. “The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.” - Elizabeth McCracken

81. “Libraries are not facing crisis, they are in crisis.” - Patrick Ness

82. “Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.” - Patrick Ness

83. “Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.” - Patrick Ness

84. “Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.” - Laura Bush

85. “Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world.” - John McPhee

86. “I've got libraries in my blood.” - Charlaine Harris

87. “The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one — at least, no male person — ever consulted works of reference except in search of pornography. As soon as you approached she pierced you through and through with a flash of her pince-nez and let you know that your dirty secret was no secret from HER. After all, all works of reference are pornographical, except perhaps Whitaker’s Almanack. You can put even the Oxford Dictionary to evil purposes by looking up words like —— and ——.” - George Orwell

88. “On to the library. And all through his time at the card catalog, combing the shelves, filling out the request cards, he danced a silent, flirtatious minuet of the eyes with a rosy-cheeked redhead in the biology section, pages of notes spread before her. All his life, he had had a yen for women in libraries. In a cerebral setting, the physical becomes irresistible. Also, he figured he was really more likely to meet a better or at least more compatible woman in a library than in a saloon. Ought to have singles libraries, with soups and salads, Bach and Mozart, Montaignes bound in morocco; place to sip, smoke, and seduce in a classical setting, noon to midnight. Chaucer's Salons, call them, franchise chain.” - Stephen Minkin

89. “Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.” - Sarah J. Maas

90. “I always say, 'Books beat boredom,' said Amanda wisely.” - Mo Willems

91. “The library is not, as some would have it, a place for the retiring of disposition or faint of heart. It is not an ivory tower or a quiet room in a sanitarium facing away from the afternoon sun. It is, rather, a command center, a power base. A board room, a war room. An Oval Office for all who preside over their own destinies. One does not retreat from the world here; one prepares to join it at an advantage.” - Eric Burns

92. “I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them."[Letter to Herbert Putnam; in: Waters, Edward N.: Herbert Putnam: the tallest little man in the world; Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 33:2 (April 1976), p. 171]” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

93. “My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, allowing herself to grow closer and closer to Compleat, to notice more and more how fine and straight his shelves remained, despite great structural stress. That sort of moral fortitude is rare in this day and age. By and by, my siblings and I were born and romped on the balconies, raced up and down the splintered ladders, and pored over many encyclopedias and exciting novels. I know just everything about everything—so long as it beings with A through L.” - Catherynne M. Valente

94. “Now look," snapped the Dean, "we've searched everywhere for a decent library on this island. There simply isn't one! It's ridiculous. How is anyone supposed to get anything done?” - Terry Pratchett

95. “Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)” - Neil Gaiman

96. “We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library” - Carl Sagan

97. “LibrariesAreNeccessaryGardens,UnsurpassedAtGrowingExcitement” - J. Patrick Lewis

98. “A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.” - zadie smith

99. “Inside the front flap of the book were handwritten names of the dozen or so people who had checked the book out before Naomi. Instead of writing her name, Naomi had a thin paper receipt with the due date printed on it. She could never possess this book the way those other people had. It was one of those uselessly nostalgic and sentimental thoughts that serve only our own romantic ideals, but I couldn't help believing it was true nonetheless. I took a pencil out from behind the register and handed it to her.” - Dinaw Mengestu

100. “Before Gutenberg, libraries were small -- the Cambridge University library had only 122 volumes in 1424, for instance; after Gutenberg literacy became widespread.” - Larry Stone

101. “She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her book cart as she wheeled it down the aisle, and the books themselves, symbols of order on their backs - young adulthood reduced to "YA," mystery reduced to a tiny red skull.” - T.E.D. Klein

102. “I was pretty sure I'd just had a nerdgasm.” - Nicole Peeler

103. “In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there” - Jane Austen

104. “...bookstores, libraries... they're the closest thing I have to a church.” - Jim C. Hines

105. “I like libraries. It's a comfort that knowledge can be save for so long. That what we learn can be passed on.” - Jackson Pearce

106. “There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.” - Terry Pratchett

107. “I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.” - Nick Hornby

108. “I told him. We got a library here. Got plenty of good books, too. -Larry Brown, Dirty Work” - Larry Brown

109. “I fall in love with any girl who smells of library paste.” - Charles Schulz

110. “Our sense that a library is a public good and our idea of what such a place should look like derived precisely from a model created in Rome several thousand years ago.” - Stephen Greenblatt