There is no frigate like a book”.

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger.
'No, and if he were I would burn my library.

A wise man poor
Is like a sacred book that’s never read,—
To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.
This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away

Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice [in my opinion], no book - it is a plaything.

The library was like a stone quarry where no rain had fallen in ten thousand years.
Way off in that direction: silence.
Way off in that direction: hush.
It was the time between things finished and things begun. Nobody died here. Nobody was born. The library, and all its books, just were.

The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet;

Nothing is more important than an unread library.