A Book in Hand is Worth Two in the Library : Quotations on Books and Librarianship

Over the years, political leaders, literary figures, philosophers, and yes, the most quoted person of all, "anonymous, " have had a lot to say about libraries and books.

Some are semiserious: "Blessings upon Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books"--Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881); some biting: "What is responsible for the success of many works is the rapport between the mediocrity of the authors ideas and the mediocrity of the publics"--Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794). And a few are surprisingly revealing: "A library makes me sick"--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

Collected here are hundreds of quotes about libraryland.

Subjects include libraries and librarians, books and bookworms, borrowing and lending, censorship, reading, writing, education, and more.

Augmenting the text are the authors own irreverent and witty observations about the quotes and their subjects.