“A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.”

“...a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth.”

“I wear brown shirts to protect against the combination of coffee and clumsiness.
”

“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.”

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

“He who wars against the arts, wars not against nations, but against all mankind.”