Holbrook Jackson (who was a famous bibliophile) once said, ‘Your library is your portrait.’ I like this quote because the books one collects can tell others more about who you are than your physical appearance. Here are a few other quotes about libraries and some beautiful photos of some extraordinary libraries.
Libraries are not made; they grow. – Augustine Birrell
Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. – Augustine Birrell
It is impossible to enter a large library… without feeling an inward sensation of reverence, and without catching some sparks of noble emulation, from the mass of mind which is scattered around you.
– James Crossley
What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us. – John Bright
It is one of the strangest stories in the history of modern literature. A novel rejected by every commercial publisher who saw it. A novel prosecuted for obscenity…
Read moreIt is one of the great near-misses in modern publishing history. In 1953 a forty-one-year-old schoolmaster named William Golding finished a short, strange novel about a group of…
Read moreThere is a particular category of rare book that transcends the ordinary parameters of the collecting field. These are not simply early printings of significant texts they are…
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