All round the room my silent servants wait,
My friends in every season, bright and dim.

All round the room my silent servants wait,
My friends in every season, bright and dim.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so read more

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

A library implies an act of faith

A library implies an act of faith

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all
the souls of all read more

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 winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem
to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of
their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom
of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
- Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia),

The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or
library, is to look at his books. One read more

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.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of
diabolical knowledge.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of
diabolical knowledge.

Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe
Where every book is thy epitaph.

Thou can'st not die. Here thou art more than safe
Where every book is thy epitaph.

Food for the soul.
[Lat., Nutrimentum spiritus.]

Food for the soul.
[Lat., Nutrimentum spiritus.]

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.