“Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."”

“He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.”

“Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”

“It is like having a book out from the library.
It is like constantly having a book out from the library.”

“It was the kind of library
he had only read about in books.”

“I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger.
'No, and if he were I would burn my library.”

“All of the life-changing awesome
words and pictures and ideas
inside your library are useless
without just one word outside
your library: Open.”

“What in the world would we do without our libraries?”

“Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.”

“The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.”