The Library Lady > The Library Lady's Quotes

“I think that the measure of whether a life has been a good one is how much love there has been in that life--love both given and received.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
― C.S. Lewis

“But my mother's life was a never-ending round of maintenance. Not one single thing did she ever achieve but that it had to be done all over again, one day or one week or one season later. Oh, the monotony.”
― Jacqueline Kelly, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“If I write a book I do it mostly for myself for the child in me and for the adult in me. The criterion for my children’s books is: If I were a child would I like it That’s very egotistical but it’s the same thing with my books for adults. I wouldn’t do a book if I didn’t want to partake and share. With a book I can do both: I give and I share.”
― Tomi Ungerer

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
― E.B. White

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
― Sophocles

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
― Emily Dickinson

“A library is infinity under a roof.”
― Gail Carson Levine

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
― E.B. White

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.”
― E.B. White

“Anyone who has an egg to watch over has a stake in the future, and the future--they were sure of it--was going to be good.”
― Eva Ibbotson, The Ogre of Oglefort

“Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.”
― Dr. Seuss

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“A book that bores me to tears is a book that neglects character building and quality of prose.”
― Kristin Cashore

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates

“Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.”
― Theodore Geisel

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”
― Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.”
― Al Gore

“The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“I'd learned early that fatness in a book wasn't a warning sign, but rather a promise that you would be allowed to remain in its world for a longer time.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Nighttown

“What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face.

"Why—why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?”
― Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Understood Betsy