Library
Library Update: quotes archive
The Library Update is emailed each month to subscribers. Each issue contains an interesting or humourous quote. Subscribe to the Library Update.
- no.25
- "The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived." - Ann Patchett, writer (1963 - ).
- no.24
- "Anyone who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid." - H.W. Fowler, lexicographer (1858 - 1933).
- no.23
- "He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it." - James Boswell, biographer and lawyer (1740 - 1795).
- no.22
- "Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right." - Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882 - 1971).
- no.21
- "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor." - Truman Capote, author (1924 - 1984).
- no.20
- "We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection." - Oliver Sacks, neurologist and writer (1933 - 2015).
- no.19
- "Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away." - Arthur Helps, writer (1813 - 1875).
- no.18
- "Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organizational and analytical aptitude, and discretion." – Marilyn Johnson, This Book is Overdue!, Harper Perennial, 2011, p.6.
- no.17
- "The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the Library." – Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science (1879 – 1955).
- no.16
- "I gave her my best librarian frown and put one finger to my lips. It works every time. We librarians are like practitioners of Jedi mind-control when it comes to shushing." – Nick Pageant, Beauty And The Bookworm, Pageantry Books, 2014.
- no.15
- "No libraries, no progress." – Willard Scott, actor, author (b.1934).
- no.14
- "In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them." – Mark Twain, author and humourist (1835 – 1910).
- no.13
- "When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian." – Joan Bauer, author (b.1951).
- no.12
- "Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark... In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed." – Germaine Greer, theorist, academic and journalist (b.1939).
- no.11
- "Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills!" – Charles Ogden.
- no.10
- "I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries." – Carl Sagan, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author (1934 – 1996).
- no.9
- "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one." – Neil Gaiman, writer (b.1960).
- no.8
- "To ask why we need libraries at all, when there is so much information available elsewhere, is about as sensible as asking if roadmaps are necessary now that there are so very many roads." – Jon Bing, writer and law professor (1944 – 2014).
- no.7
- "Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed." – Charles Medawar, The Social Audit Consumer Handbook, Macmillan, 1978, p. 41.
- no.6
- "A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life." – Henry Ward Beecher, social reformer, speaker (1813 – 1887).
- no.5
- "The most important asset of any library goes home at night – the library staff." – Timothy Healy, former head of the New York Public Library (1923 – 1992).
- no.4
- "Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future." – Ray Bradbury, writer (1920 – 2012).
- no.3
- "To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books." – Carlos María Domínguez, writer and journalist (b.1955).
- no.2
- "An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them." – Stephen Fry, comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist (b.1957)
- no.1
- "In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim." - Linton Weeks, Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2001.