“ You cannot always choose your companions; you can always choose your books. You can, if you will, spend a few minutes every day with the best and wisest men and women the world has ever known.
The people you have known, the things you have said and done, and the books you have read, all these are now a part of you.
You like yourself better when you are with people who are well-bred and clever; you respect yourself more when you are reading a bright and wholesome book, for you are then in the company of the wise. ”

“ Is it a rational procedure for one, upon the completion of his course of training, to discontinue all further investigation and to lay aside what little love for learning and literature and philosophy and science that may have been aroused in his bosom by school or college inspirations? And how is this advancing and widening of one's horizon by means of the accumulated stores of knowledge gathered by the previous generations of the world's strong thinkers and beautiful writers to be secured, other than by a collection of good books, by a library? ”

“ The great purpose of a public library is to promote and unite intelligence. It brings together the products of the wise minds of the world. It holds within its walls a collection of all the wise and witty things ever said: these it marks and indexes and offers to its friends.
It is in its community a sort of intellectual minuteman, always ready to supply to every comer something of interest and pleasure. It puts good books, and no others, into the hands of children. ”

“ We have had, since many centuries, in all our cities, the many meeting places of religious sects—our chapels, churches and cathedrals. They stand for so much that is good, but they have not brought together the communities in which they are placed. A church is not always the center of the best life of all who live within the shadow of its spire.
For several generations we have been building temples to the gods of learning and good citizenship—our schools. And they have come nearer to bringing together for the highest purpose the best impulses of all of us than have any other institutions. ”

“ If, now, you can bring these young citizens into sympathy with the books the libraries would persuade them to read; if you can impress upon them the reading habit; then the libraries can supplement your good work; will rejoice in empty shelves; will feel that they are not in vain; and the coming generations will delight, one and all, in that which good books can give; will speak more plainly; will think more clearly; will be less often led astray by false prophets of every kind; will see that all men are of the one country of humanity; and will—to sum it all—be better citizens of a good state. ”

“ Hundreds of small cities and towns tax themselves for electric plants and count themselves fortunate. No one seems to regret this taxation for electric lights which illuminate the citizen's way at night. Should there not be an equal or greater readiness on the part of a community to establish a library and so illuminate the mental horizon of every citizen?
A public library is a necessity, not a luxury. Every community which realizes this and establishes a library, proclaims itself an intelligent, progressive town and one worth living in. ”

“ The work of the library is for civic education and the making of good citizens, a form of patriotism made imperative for the millions of foreigners coming yearly to our shores.
The public library offers common ground to all. There are no social lines to bar the entrance; the doors open at every touch, if only the simple etiquette of quiet, earnest bearing is observed. No creeds are to be subscribed to, the rich and poor meet together in absolute independence. Even the aristocracy of intellect does not count in the people's university. ”

“ The library is where the readers are introduced to the friendship of authors and their books. There they are at home and there we too may be at home. Old and young, rich and poor, wise and simple, men and women and children, there we may meet new friends on kindly and familiar terms and widen our thoughts as we learn of their wisdom and their wit. Still better, there we may renew our acquaintance with old friends and feel the contracted horizon of our lives again enlarge as we meet them once more. ”

“ A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a community should think it as discreditable to be without a well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state. Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power to read may then become a means to a life-long education. ”

“ A library is not a luxury; it is not for the cultured few; it is not merely for the scientific; it is not for any intellectual cult or exclusive literary set. It is a great, broad, universal public benefaction. It lifts the entire community; it is the right arm of the intellectual development of the people, ministering to the wants of those who are [Pg 10] already educated and spreading a universal desire for education. It is the upper story of the public school system, while it is a broad field wherein ripe scholars may find a fuller training for their already highly developed faculties. ”

“ An educational system which contents itself with teaching to read and then fails to see that the best reading is provided, when undesirable reading is so cheap and plentiful as to be a constant menace to the public good, is as inconsistent and absurd as to teach our children the expert use of the knife, fork and spoon, and then provide them with no food. The most important movement before the professional educators to-day, is the broadening going on so rapidly in their duties to their profession and to the public. ”

“ Modern industrialism exacts from the artisan and the worker in every branch, skill and knowledge not dreamed of years ago. He who would not be trampled under foot needs to keep pace with the onward sweep in his particular craft. The public library furnishes to the ambitious artisan the opportunity to rise. Upon its shelves he may find the latest and the best in invention and in method and in knowledge. Never in the history of the country has there been such a desire manifested among the adult population for continued education as may be noted to-day. ”

“ THE FREEDOM OF BOOKS
The free town library is wholly a product of the last half century. It is the crowning creature of democracy for its own higher culture. There is nothing conceivable to surpass it as an agency in popular education. Schools, colleges, lectures, classes, clubs and societies, scientific and literary, are tributaries to it—primaries, feeders. It takes up the work of all of them to utilize it, to carry it on, and make more of it. Future time will perfect it, and will perfect the institutions out of which and over which it has grown ”

“ THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY
There is no institution so intimately, so universally, so constantly connected with the life of the whole people as the free public library—no instrumentality that can do so much to civilize society. The public schools alone cannot accomplish the task of elevating mankind to even the most modest ideal of a well ordered society.
Our public schools have been the chief source of the greater general intelligence and hence the industrial superiority of our citizens over those of other countries. But the public schools cannot accomplish impossibilities. ”

“ Increased taxation is one of the greatest hindrances to the opening of a public library, but any institution which enriches and uplifts the lives of the people, is the greatest economy. Any attempt to conduct civic affairs without a reasonable expenditure of money for such influences is the grossest extravagance. No economy results from ignorance and vice, and the public library has long since established its claim as one of the most potent remedies for such conditions. ”

“ We must understand clearly that the beneficent result of this system of education is just as possible to the son of the peasant as to the son of the president, is just as helpful to the blacksmith as to the barrister, to the farmer as to the philosopher; and in its possibilities and in its helpfulness is a constant blessing to all and through all, and is needed by all alike.
The most worthy mind, that which is of most value to the world, is the well-informed mind which is public and large. ”

“ No town can hope to live up to its greatest possibilities without a public library, and none with a sincere desire need be denied the blessings which result from such an institution.
There are few communities which would not provide for a public library, if its advantages were appreciated, for it is a remedy for many ills and is all-embracing in its scope. It vitalizes school work, and receiving the pupil from the school, the library continues his education throughout life. It is a home missionary, sending its messengers, the books, into every shop and home. ”

“ What we have actually lost during this great century of scientific development we can never know. Nor must we forget that invention is the result of cumulated knowledge which the fertile brain of man utilizes in new directions, and that the preservation of the knowledge and experience of the centuries is the province of the public library, where all alike may have access to its riches. The ideal democracy is the democracy of knowledge and of learning. ”

“ Thus the library performs its high and noble duty of helping men to live, "not by bread alone, but by every word of God," who, through good books, has been speaking to the generations of men not only for their instruction but even more for their delight. ”

“ The very presence of a public library has a meaning and exerts a power for good. Especially is this the case when this presence is made evident by a separate and worthy building. The building which stands for books, for knowledge, for the records of human experience; a house not just like other houses but with marks of permanence, dignity and grace, and evidently so contrived as to call the people in and to distribute freely to them these wise and entertaining books, must be a positive influence in itself. ”

“ Get good books; give them a home attractive to readers of good books; name a friend of good books as mistress of this home—and you have a library; all share in its support and all get pleasure and profit from it if they will; without divisions religious, politic or social, it unites all in the pursuit of high pleasure and sound learning, and gives that common interest in a common concern which is the basis of all local pride. ”

“ It is a great part of our education to know how to find facts. No man knows everything, but the man who knows how to find an indispensable fact quickly has the best substitute for such knowledge. We need a library to carry forward in a better manner the education of the children who leave school; to give them a better chance for self-education. We need it to give thoughts and inspiration to the teachers of the people, those who in the schoolroom or pulpit, on the rostrum, or with the pen attempt to instruct or lead their fellow citizens. ”

“ Even now many wise men are agreed that the love of books, as mere things of sentiment, and the reading of good books, as mere habit, are incomparably better results of schooling than any of the definite knowledge which the best of teachers can store into pupils' minds. Teaching how to read is of less importance in the intelligence of a generation than the teaching what to read. ”

“ Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought—substituting, by natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip, scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice. ”

“ I believe you will find there is something yet to do in reading in which the library can be of help. Reading comes by practice. The practice which a pupil gets during school hours does not make him a quick and skilful reader. There is not enough of it. If you encourage the reading habit, and lead that habit, as you easily can, along good lines, your pupils will gain much, simply in knowledge of words, in ability to get the meaning out of print, even though we say nothing of the help their reading will give them in other ways. ”

“ And we may never know what society has lost by failure to quicken into life this dormant talent for invention, for art, for literature, for philosophy. "The loss to society of the unearned increment is trivial compared to the loss of the undiscovered resource." ”

“ You like to meet old friends. Your brain, also, likes to come across things it knows already, to renew acquaintance with the knowledge it has stored away and half forgotten. The pleasures of recognition and association; the delights of renewing your friendships with your own ideas are many, easy to get, never failing. But if you wish to have interests and delights in good plenty you must know of many things. If you wish to be happy, learn something. ”

“ He who has food, raiment and shelter in reasonable degree, access to the intellectual wealth of the world in public libraries, to the riches created by the master painters and sculptors, found in public galleries and museums, to the untrammeled use of public parks and drives, and the many other universal advantages which are now so increasingly many, need not envy the richest men on earth. Many a millionaire is poorer than the most humble of his employees, for excessive wealth brings its own train of evils to torment its possessor. ”