53 Inspiring Library Quotes

In a world brimming with digital distractions, the timeless allure of libraries remains a haven for seekers of knowledge and inspiration. Whether you're drawn to the quiet whispers of pages turning or the profound wisdom etched into every spine, libraries evoke a sense of wonder and reflection. This carefully curated collection of 53 inspiring library quotes captures the essence of these sanctuaries of learning and imagination. Each quote is a testament to the transformative power of libraries, celebrating the boundless potential they offer to dreamers, thinkers, and adventurers alike. Join us as we explore these gems of wisdom, sure to ignite your passion for the written word and renew your appreciation for the enduring magic of libraries.

1. “My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.” - Joan Bauer

2. “If your library is not "unsafe," it probably isn't doing its job.” - John Berry

3. “The library knows that it is a temporary fix. We have a stamp for the inside front cover: BROKEN SPINE NOTED. It is like a bracelet worn by a diabetic. When you return the book with this message stamped inside, we know you're not the one responsible for this horrible thing. It was some other bastard before you. The book has a preexisting condition.” - Don Borchert

4. “That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.” - Aphra Behn

5. “But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence. ” - Alberto Manguel

6. “During the day, the library is a realm of order.” - Alberto Manguel

7. “The world encyclopedia, the universal library, exists, and it is the world itself.” - Alberto Manguel

8. “There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wantsto protect culture. The only thing about my pending career thatwas changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarianswere only as important as the community they inspired. If Iwas going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protectinformation, it would be to bring the community together andinspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for.” - Scott Douglas

9. “When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either “You’re joking, right?” or “They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?” - Scott Douglas

10. “...killing rats wasn’t in my job description.” - Scott Douglas

11. “A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic lady—was with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn’t make the library. People made the library. That’s what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books.” - Scott Douglas

12. “We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.” - Scott Douglas

13. “I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these."- Mr. Darcy” - Jane Austen

14. “A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.” - Lemony Snicket

15. “Bibliothèque Nationale. Ich sitze und lese einen Dichter. Es sind viele Leute im Saal, aber man spürt sie nicht. Sie sind in den Büchern. Manchmal bewegen sie sich in den Blättern, wie Menschen, die schlafen und sich umwenden zwischen zwei Träumen.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

16. “A great library contains the diary of the human race.” - George Mercer Dawson

17. “The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.” - Betty Smith

18. “Have you really read all those books in your room?”Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.” - John Green

19. “Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

20. “As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

21. “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

22. “First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.” - Charles Bukowski

23. “Now take my hand and hold it tight.I will not fail you here tonight,For failing you, I fail myselfAnd place my soul upon a shelfIn Hell's library without light.I will not fail you here tonight.” - Dean Koontz

24. “But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at ease in society. He had just been too scared to try. But now he was forced to, and so he did–he went and got a job at the public library. He was not quite a librarian, but close. Greg was a shelver. There would be carts of books to shelve, then there would be no more carts of books to shelve, then there would be carts of books to shelve.As a shelver, Greg felt that life was passing him by in a slow and distant, but massive, way–like the moon.” - Tao Lin

25. “The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.” - Lemony Snicket

26. “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” - Albert Einstein

27. “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

28. “You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.” - Ray Bradbury

29. “He went through rooms he named as he discovered them, and which he hardly had time to appreciate before he'd flung open a door at the far end and plunged through. . . . and in the Library of All the Same Book he actually stopped to examine a few of the volumes, all titled Various, that lined the shelves.” - Chris Adrian

30. “When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?” - Ray Bradbury

31. “How can you be nervous? Don't you see? We're in a library.” - Eilis O'Neal

32. “I took to the Bodleian library as to a lover and ... would sit long hours in Bodley's arms to emerge, blinking and dazed with the smell and feel of all those books.” - Laurie R. King

33. “The record store was a place of escape. It was a library and a clubhouse” - Cameron Crowe quoted” - Gary Calamar

34. “He wished he was with his mom in her library, where everything was safe and numbered and organized by the Dewey decimal system. Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for, like the meaning of your dream, or your dad.” - Brian Selznick

35. “You build a thousand castles, a thousand sanctuaries, you are nothing; you build a library, you are everything!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

36. “Você constrói mil castelos, mil santuários, você não é nada; você constrói uma biblioteca, você é tudo” - Mehmet Murat ildan

37. “Részvétet éreztem az ismeretlen sportember iránt, és egyúttal kárörömet is. Úgy kell neki, miért sportember, de ha már sportember, mit keres minálunk. Valószínűleg ő is így érzett volna irányomban, ha a golfpályán látott volna meg engem.” - Antal Szerb

38. “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 Zafon

39. “Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting” - Dorothy L. Sayers

40. “But we're a university! We have to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?""Students," said Senior Wrangler morosely.” - Terry Pratchett

41. “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

42. “Library. It's where we lock up all those books before they start giving kids ideas," I said solemnly. "Very dangerous place to be.” - Scott Tracey

43. “Oh, wow.""What do you think?""I tried to imagine, but--I mean...it's so much more--""Think it's large enough to keep you satisfied for a while?""It's so much bigger than I expected"He backed away, leaving Beatrice to gaze in wonder at the library that took up half of the second floor."I think I'll just leave you two alone for a bit," he said with a chuckle.” - Elizabeth Hunter

44. “Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.” - Lemony Snicket

45. “Who wants a library full of books you've already read?” - Harlan Ellison

46. “There is something nice about a library, isn't there?" Mr. Curtis said. He nodded and took in the familiar scenery. "The scent of ink and worn, dusty pages.” - Ilana Waters

47. “A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.” - Pat Conroy

48. “Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books ... Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.” - Justin Cronin

49. “In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious possession.” - John Bright

50. “Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know where to start.” - Alexander McCall Smith

51. “En África, cuando un anciano muere, una biblioteca arde, toda una biblioteca desaparece, sin necesidad de que las llamas acaben con el papel” - Amadou Hampâté Bâ

52. “I know exactly what I would do with immortality: I would read every book in the library.” - Mark Jason Dominus

53. “To know your way round a library is to master the whole of culture, i.e. the whole world.” - Sophie Divry