59 Library Quotes For Inspiration

In a world brimming with boundless knowledge and endless adventures, libraries stand as sanctuaries for the curious mind. Whether you're delving into the pages of a timeless classic, exploring new ideas, or seeking solace in the quiet embrace of a reading nook, libraries offer a unique magic that fuels our imagination and broadens our horizons. To celebrate these hallowed halls of wisdom, we've curated a collection of the top 59 library quotes that capture the essence of inspiration and the love for learning. Join us as we explore words that echo the profound impact libraries have on our lives and the endless possibilities they hold.

1. “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

2. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” - Jorge Luis Borges

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. “Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.” - Anatole France

5. “Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf.Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure.But th' shelf is th' main thing.” - Finley Peter Dunne

6. “In a few minutes I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I'd heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but hushed.” - Martha Cooley

7. “I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.” - Barbara Kingsolver

8. “I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.” - Isaac Asimov

9. “A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

10. “The world is quiet here.” - Lemony Snicket

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

12. “In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.” - Alberto Manguel

13. “We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.” - Alberto Manguel

14. “It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.” - Anne Fadiman

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

16. “His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.” - Ray Bradbury

17. “She'd always been a little excitable, a little more passionate about books than your average person, but she was supposed to be -- she was a librarian, after all.” - Sarah Beth Durst

18. “Library stacks from this perspective are not a repository; they are a crowd.” - Kenneth A. Bruffee

19. “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

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

21. “A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.” - Shelby Foote

22. “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

23. “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.” - Daniel Handler

24. “Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!(from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)” - Russell T. Davies

25. “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

26. “-Mikhail?...Try making suggestions next time, or just plain asking. You go do whatever it is you're doing, and I'll go search you extensive library for a book on manners.-You will not find it.-Why am I not surprised?” - Christine Feehan

27. “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

28. “‎"Since I could only take six books per visit from the library, I had to time it right, or I'd be stuck on Sundays rereading the five Reader's Digest Condensed Books sitting on our red laquered living room shelf.” - Randy Susan Meyers

29. “Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the staff room."I heard a noise from the drop box," Jean said."What kind of noise?""I think it's an animal.""A what?""An animal," Jean said. "I think there's an animal in the drop box."That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like an old man clearing his throat.Gurr-gug-gug. Gurr-gug-gug.But the opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze for an old man. It had to be an animal. But what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk.What I got instead was a blast of freezing air. The night before, the temperature had reached minus fifteen degrees, and that didn't take into account the wind, which cut under your coat and squeezed your bones. And on that night, of all nights, someone had jammed a book into return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside, maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. It was the kind of cold that made it almost painful to breathe.I was still catching my breath, in fact, when I saw the kitten huddled in the front left corner of the box. It was tucked up in a little space underneath a book, so all I could see at first was its head. It looked grey in the shadows, almost like a little rock, and I could tell its fur was dirty and tangled. Carefully, I lifted the book. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly, and for a second I looked straight into its huge golden eyes. The it lowered its head and sank back down into its hole.At that moment, I lost every bone in my body and just melted.” - Vicki Myron

30. “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

31. “Some people write letters, in the library.” - Margaret Atwood

32. “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

33. “Joss's ears perked up. He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did.” - Heather Brewer

34. “Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

35. “The porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire- the desire every book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising that a Book is a Person and not a Thing.” - W.N.P. Barbellion

36. “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

37. “Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door. * * * They opened the door and stepped in.They stopped.The library deeps lay waiting for them.Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes.” - Ray Bradbury

38. “Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year.” - David Davis

39. “Every girl who aspires ultimately to outfit her own home should assemble a library on architectural styles and on furniture both traditional and modern. As few brides can buy expensively illustrated volumes and household equipment simultaneously, a girl should begin asking parents for books early in life, probably while still in the primary grades...” - Johnson O'Connor

40. “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

41. “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

42. “Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.” - Helene Hanff

43. “Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.” - Jorge Luis Borges

44. “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

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

46. “I wanted a library like this...[] A cave of words that I'd made myself.” - Maggie Stiefvater

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

48. “It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.' 'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?' 'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.” - Iain Banks

49. “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

50. “It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller, if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing or- anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!” - Margaret Widdemer

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

52. “Please bury me in the library With a dozen long-stemmed proses” - J. Patrick Lewis

53. “Some books you never get over, like a first love. Some books that made an enormous impression on you when you were young you are afraid to read again years later, like being sorry you met that former love for coffee, because you couldn’t see what you once saw. But there are those few books that can still move you in the old, throbbing way.""How I got over” - Darryl Pinckney

54. “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

55. “Are you missing the library again?" Seth asked, startling her as he walked into the room.Kendra turned to face her brother. "You caught me," she congratulated him. "I'm reading.""I bet the librarians back home are panicking. Summer vacation, and no Kendra Sorenson to keep them in business. Have they been sending you letters?""Might not hurt you to pick up a book, just as an experiment."Whatever. I looked up the definition for 'nerd' in the dictionary. Know what it said?""I bet you'll tell me."" 'If you're reading this, you are one.' "You're a riot." Kendra turned back to the journal, flipping to a random page.Seth took a seat on his bed across from her. "Kendra, seriously, I can sort of see reading a cool book for fun, but dusty old journals? Really? Has anybody told you there are magical creatures out there?" He pointed out the window."Has anybody told you some of those creatures can eat you?" Kendra responded. "I'm not reading these just for fun. They have good info.""like what? Patton and Lena smooching?"Kendra rolled her eyes. "I'm not telling. You'll end up in a tar pit.""There's a tar pit?" he said, perking up. "Where?” - Brandon Mull

56. “Orphan could no longer hear or see the shadows of the dead. He didn't think they had perished. Most likely they were hiding now, somewhere in this landscape of books.” - Lavie Tidhar

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

58. “Sam hauled open the library door."There you are!" Whit pushed up from the desk he'd been hunched over. "We thought you two had given up on us.""Unlike some people I know," I said, removing my mittens and scarf, "we don't live here.""She says that now." Sam followed me toward Whit's and Orrin's desks, where they worked over flat electronic screens. "But the first thing she said when I showed her the library was that we should move in."Orrin lifted an eyebrow, oddly delicate for someone so large. "The acoustics would be terrible.” - Jodi Meadows

59. “The library had become her solace. Her refuge.Books did not question or judge. They made safe companions.” - Inglath Cooper