A Librarian's Open Shelf Quotes

“Thank God for books; let them be your friends and companions through life—for information, for recreation, but above all for inspiration.”
― Arthur E. Bostwick, A Librarian's Open Shelf: Essays on Various Subjects

“Itself a product of the great extension of intellectual activity to classes in which it was formerly bounded by narrow limits, the library is bound to widen those limits wherever they can be stretched, and every movement of them reacts to help it. Surely advertisement on its part is an evangel—a bearing of good intellectual tidings into the darkness. We are spiritualistic mediums in the best sense—the bearers of authentic messages from all the good and great of past or present time; only with us, no turning on of the light, no publicity however glaring, will break the spell or do otherwise than aid, for whether we succeed or fail, whether we live or die, those messages, recorded as they are in books, will stand while humanity remains.”
― Arthur E. Bostwick, A Librarian's Open Shelf: Essays on Various Subjects