National Library Week was observed April 13-19, 2014 with the theme, “Lives change @ your library®.
Emory Librarians celebrated with a party and by collected library-related quotes to share:
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges (writer, and National Librarian of Argentina. (b1899)
“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man” ― T.S. Eliot
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx
“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.” ― Keith Richards
“A library’s function is to give the public in the quickest and cheapeast way information, inspiration, and recreation. If a better way than the book can be found, we should use it.” – Melvil Dewey (1851-1931)
“A book should be a ball of light in one’s hands.” Ezra Pound
“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, King of the Murgos
“In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim.” ― Linton Weeks
“A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.”― Shelby Foote
“You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.” — Ray Bradbury
“Look, I… I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, but I am proud of what I am.[sic]I… am a librarian.” The Mummy (1999)― Max Allan Collins, The Mummy
“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.” ― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
The earliest authenticated library, that of Pharaoh Ramses II, in the second millennium before our era, bore an inscription over the portals designating it as “the house of the healing for the soul” The Oldest Library Motto: ψγxhσ Iatpeion Cora E. Lutz The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), pp. 36-39 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306897
“The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance.”― Libba Bray
“It’s still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.” ― Neil Gaiman