Quotes by Librarians - Page 2

I will tell everyone I know to come [to the library]. This place saves lives.
Gina Sheridan
I stubbed my toe just as someone dropped a book into the inside drop box. As I yelped and howled in pain, a child on the other side said, 'Mommy, I think we hurt the book!
Gina Sheridan
A library's function is to give the public in the quickest and cheapest way: information, inspiration, and recreation. If a better way than the book can be found, we should use it.
Melvil Dewey
The time was when a library was very like a museum and the librarian a mouser in musty books. The time is when the library is a school and the librarian in the highest sense a teacher.
Melvil Dewey
An old librarian once said to me, " whatever we deal with, coming here is always a visual reward.
Josh Hanagarne
Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the staff room."I heard a noise from the drop box," Jean said."What kind of noise?""I think it's an animal.""A what?""An animal," Jean said. "I think there's an animal in the drop box."That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like an old man clearing his throat.Gurr-gug-gug. Gurr-gug-gug.But the opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze for an old man. It had to be an animal. But what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk.What I got instead was a blast of freezing air. The night before, the temperature had reached minus fifteen degrees, and that didn't take into account the wind, which cut under your coat and squeezed your bones. And on that night, of all nights, someone had jammed a book into return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside, maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. It was the kind of cold that made it almost painful to breathe.I was still catching my breath, in fact, when I saw the kitten huddled in the front left corner of the box. It was tucked up in a little space underneath a book, so all I could see at first was its head. It looked grey in the shadows, almost like a little rock, and I could tell its fur was dirty and tangled. Carefully, I lifted the book. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly, and for a second I looked straight into its huge golden eyes. The it lowered its head and sank back down into its hole.At that moment, I lost every bone in my body and just melted.
Vicki Myron
A library after closing is a lonely place. It is heart-poundingly silent, and the rows of shelves create an almost unfathomable number of dark and creepy corners.
Vicki Myron
Statistics are somewhat like old medical journals, or like revolvers in newly opened mining districts. Most men rarely use them, and find it troublesome to preserve them so as to have them easy of access; but when they do want them, they want them badly.
John Shaw Billings
The winter will be long and bleak. Nature has a dismal aspect.
Charles Nodier
I turned to books for comfort. (Former First Lady, Laura Bush)
Laura Bush
As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be.
Audre Lorde
Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.
Audre Lorde
It might be added, too, that it takes something more than preponderance of numbers to win a battle....
Burton E. Stevenson
The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.
Nella Larsen
It was only that she wanted him to be happy, resenting, however, his inability to be so with things as they were, and never acknowledging that though she did want him to be happy, it was only in her own way and by some plan of hers for him that she truly desired him to be so.
Nella Larsen
No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library ... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.
Lawrence Clark Powell
He's got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he's not disagreeable about it. He's too sure he's right to bother being disagreeable.
Mary Ann Shaffer
DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem.
Audre Lorde
I have wished you something None of the others would....
Philip Larkin
Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commence from that point on.
Georges Bataille
Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.
Philip Larkin
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem — nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
Audre Lorde
What are days for?Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over.They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?Ah, solving that questionBrings the priest and the doctor In their long coatsRunning over the fields.
Philip Larkin
Heart cannot think what outrage and what cries, with black smoke and flashing fire, the beast threw forth, turning the whole world to darkness.
Margaret Hodges
I don’t much care for people—never have, never will. I got my reasons. I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right and he’ll treat you right—he’ll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Dogs die. But dogs live, too. Right up until they die, they live. They live brave, beautiful lives. They protect their families. And love us. And make our lives a little brighter. And they don't waste time being afraid of tomorrow.
Dan Gemeinhart
I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he'll treat you right. He'll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against 'em.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Mati took in my expression, and a moment later I was in his arms. His kisses washed over me like floodwater over parched earth. I clutched him helplessly, tears falling down my face and mingling with his as he whispered my name.
Kathy MacMillan
I had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are 'The three pleasures of life -drinking, smoking, and masturbation')
Philip Larkin
The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.
Giacomo Casanova
I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.
Laura Amy Schlitz
Em, I am trying to have an important conversation!" shouted Seylin. "I will not change into a cat!
Clare B. Dunkle
We can _start_ making Christmas and Santa can finish up.
Toni Buzzeo
Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.
Audre Lorde
The emotional element which gives an obsessive value to communal existence is death.
Georges Bataille
What do you want to say to me?’‘Nothing—just to talk about the profession I am entering. I am about to practice virtue in order to find a man who loves it only to destroy it' [replied Mademoiselle Vesian.]‘That is it exactly; and believe me, everything in this life is much the same. We refer everything to ourselves, and each of us is a tyrant. That is why the best of mortals is he who is tolerant.
Giacomo Casanova
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin
Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all.
Audre Lorde
The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind . . . From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.
Georges Bataille
I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.
Nella Larsen
I'm so well-rounded I'm almost spherical.
Brian Katcher
It is wrong to kill anyone. It is wrong to kill those who kill. It is wrong to kill the executioner. The laws on murder must be killed!
Charles Nodier
He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.
Laura Amy Schlitz
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors' tactics, the oppressors' relationships.
Audre Lorde
Revolution is not a one time event.
Audre Lorde
They're only trees. Only trees. Whose afraid of lonely trees?
Ruth Frances Long
Halfway to the house Stan stopped and turned to Jane. He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him."I'm glad we're going steady," he whispered."So am I."In spite of the reassuring weight of his bracelet on her wrist, Jane suddenly felt shy. It seemed strange to be so close to Stan, to feel his crisp clean shirt against her cheek. She could not look up at him. Gently Stan lifted her face to his. "You're my girl," he whispered.-Fifteen
Beverly Cleary
Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of - hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Boredom is a powerful reason, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw - especially when you are young.
Mary Ann Shaffer
I guess that’s what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn’t. But it is all right.
Beverly Cleary
The Fairy Queen has sent you to do brave deeds in this world. That High City that you see is in another world. Before you climb the path to it and hang your shield on its wall, go down into the valley and fight the dragon that you were sent to fight.
Margaret Hodges
The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.
Beverly Cleary
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
Audre Lorde
Do not be alarmed if they look paler than the other maidens of Greece. They are scarcely of this Earth, and seem to be shaking off the sleep of a past life.
Charles Nodier
The question is not why should we change but rather what sort of death wish are we promoting by refusing to change?
William Badke
Dewey sent him, I thought, when I saw those eyes.
Vicki Myron
Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position.
Audre Lorde
When I was a child, I thought,Casually, that solitudeNever needed to be sought.Something everybody had,Like nakedness, it lay at hand,Not specially right or specially wrong,A plentiful and obvious thingNot at all hard to understand.Then, after twenty, it becameAt once more difficult to getAnd more desired -- though all the sameMore undesirable; for whatYou are alone has, to achieveThe rank of fact, to be expressedIn terms of others, or it's justA compensating make-believe.Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on -- in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.Viciously, then, I lock my door.The gas-fire breathes. The wind outsideUshers in evening rain. Once moreUncontradicting solitudeSupports me on its giant palm;And like a sea-anemoneOr simple snail, there cautiouslyUnfolds, emerges, what
Philip Larkin
Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.
Georges Bataille