This document contains quotes from various authors throughout history about the importance and value of books, libraries, and reading. It highlights how books can educate children, serve as companions to people, and how libraries are essential institutions that help nourish the mind and soul. The quotes illustrate that libraries are living organisms that grow over time to become treasures that preserve the knowledge of humanity.

1. Fuel Your Mind Book Week 2008

2. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. — "Of Studies". Essays II Francis BACON (1561-1626)

3. A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up children without surrounding them with books.... Children learn to read being in the presence of books. — Horace MANN (1796-1859)

4. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. — Groucho MARX

5. Let books be your dining table, And you shall be full of delights Let them be your mattress And you shall sleep restful nights — Quoted in Bar Hebraues' Ethicon St. EPHREM the Syrian (303-373)

6. A school is just a group of buildings gathered around a library — Shelby Foote

7. Libraries are not made; they grow. — "Book Buying". Obiter Dicta. Augustine BIRRELL (1850-1933)

8. It does not matter how many books you may have, but whether they are good or not. — Epistolae Morale Lucius Annaeus SENECA (3 B.C.-65 A.D.)

9. Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind. — In The Gold Bug Variations p.35, 1991. Richard Powers

10. Nutrimentum spiritus. (Food for the soul.) — Inscription on the Berlin Royal Library.

11. A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. — Henry Ward BEECHER

12. A great library contains the diary of the human race. — Address on Opening the Birmingham Free Library George Mercer DAWSON (1849-1901)

13. For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye. — Curse Against Book Stealers Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona

14. Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th' shelf is th' main thing. — "Books". Mr Dooley Says. Finley Peter DUNNE (1867-1936)

15. You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians. — Monty Python skit

16. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library —Jorge Luis BORGES (1899-1986)

17. Places to Read