28 Beautiful Quotes about Libraries

Enjoy.

Why Misquotations Catch On

How sayings from books, movies, and speeches get misremembered, care of the Atlantic.

From the piece...

Have you noticed how incorrect quotes often just sound right—sometimes, more right than actual quotations? There's a reason for that. Our brains really like fluency, or the experience of cognitive ease (as opposed to cognitive strain) in taking in and retrieving information. The more fluent the experience of reading a quote—or the easier it is to grasp, the smoother it sounds, the more readily it comes to mind—the less likely we are to question the actual quotation. Those right-sounding misquotes are just taking that tendency to the next step: cleaning up, so to speak, quotations so that they are more mellifluous, more all-around quotable, easier to store and recall at a later point. We might not even be misquoting on purpose, but once we do, the result tends to be catchier than the original.

In some cases, it's a simple question of word order. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" has an easier rhythm than the actual, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." The change certainly matters if you're a poet, or preserving the integrity of Shakespeare. But at least it does no real harm to the meaning. 

In some, it's a simplification or contraction of something that's a bit messier to remember without it. "Beam me up, Scotty!" was never actually uttered by any Star Trek character. "Beam us up, Mr. Scott!" was, in the 1968 "Gamesters of Triskelion." Likewise, Humphrey Bogart's iconic "Play it again, Sam" was in reality, "If she can stand it, I can. Play it." Note how in both cases, the sense remains basically the same. The adjustments are minor ones. They aren't blatant misquotations so much as attempts to, on some level, make things sound the way they should sound. These misquotes are in the category of, "right, that's what I wanted to say—and maybe even how I wanted to say it."

What is Art?

Some thoughts, via the Atlantic, from antiquity to today.

From the piece...


Thomas Merton in No Man is an Island:

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

Francis Ford Coppola in a recent interview:

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.

Charles Schulz on Religion

Good Reads has compiled some quotes by Charles Schulz about religion.

For instance...

“I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.”

“I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.”

Quote of the Week

Libraries are places where we writers go after we die, if we're lucky. We're going to live on through libraries. But there is also something more. In addition to being a place that we go after we die, if we are lucky, libraries are also the place where a great many writers are born.
- Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors and The Running Mate

Quote of the Week

Write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing
in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought nor afterwards in a recasting... It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.
- Gertrude Stein

Quote of the Week

One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.
- Caroline Kennedy

Quote of the Week

To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness.
- Allen Ginsberg

Quote of the Week

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.
- Horace

Quote of the Week

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
- Chinese Proverb

Quote of the Week

Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.
- Rudyard Kipling

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Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.
- Christina Baldwin

Quote of the Week

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.
- F. Scott Fitzgerarld

Quote of the Week

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
- Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Quote of the Week

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

Quote of the Week

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
- Joseph Brodsky

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A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.
- William Styron

Quote of the Week

I am a part of all I have read.
- John Kieran

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To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
- Anatole France

Quote of the Week

The medicine chest of the soul.
- Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes