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Libraries: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

The richest minds need not large libraries.— AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT — Table Talk. Bk. I. Learning-Books.

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.— BACON — Libraries.

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.— BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER — The Elder Brother. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 177.

A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.— HENRY WARD BEECHER — Star Papers.

Oxford. Bodleian Library. The true University of these days is a collection of Books.— CARLYLE — Heroes and Hero Worship.

The Hero as a Man of Letters. All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim.— BARRY CORNWALL — My Books.

A great library contains the diary of the human race.— DAWSON — Address on Opening the

Birmingham Free Library. It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by getting a great library. S.— FULLER — The Holy and Profane States.

Of Books. Maxim 1. Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.— O. W. HOLMES — The Poet at the

Breakfast Table. VIII. 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.— O. W. HOLMES — The Poet at the

Breakfast Table. VIII. 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 windingsheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old mothscented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.— CHARLES LAMB — Essays of Elia. Oxford

in the Vacation. 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. J. G. SAXE The Library. 'Tis well to borrow from the good and great; 'Tis wise to learn; 'tis God-like to create!— J. G. SAXE — The Library.

Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.— Shakespeare — Titus Andronicus. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 34.

He furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.— Shakespeare — Tempest. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 166.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.— R. B. SHERIDAN — The Rivals. Act I. Sc. 2.

Shelved around us lie The mummied authors.— BAYARD TAYLOR — The Poet's Journal.

Third Evening.