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Byline: The Register-Guard

Eugene's new library is a grand building - a palace, some will call it. But of all a city's buildings, none should be more palatial than its library. It is a place that is democratic in its practices, in that all are welcome to pursue interests of their own choosing, and noble in its aspirations, in that it seeks to improve the world one mind at a time.

Eugene has waited years for this day, which makes its arrival all the sweeter. Hundreds, even thousands, of people deserve credit for making the new library a reality. But today belongs to everyone who stands to benefit from the value of books and libraries. That value has been well-understood for centuries, as librarians and writers through the ages remind us:

"A hospital for the mind" - Inscription on the library in Alexandria, Egypt.

"Medicine for the soul" - Inscription on the library at Thebes.

"A library ... should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life" - Norman Cousins, editor of The Saturday Review.

"I do not mean to suggest that our handsome, newly enlarged library is to be the headquarters of busy bookworms, old and young, routinely absorbing knowledge by the hour while birds sing outside and the Mets fight it out for last place in the National League. On the contrary, a good library is a joyful place where the imagination roams free, and life is actively enriched" - John K. Hutchens, former editor of The New York Times Book Review, at the dedication of a new library reading room.

"I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while I vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander" - Alexander Smith, poet and essayist.

"Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed" - Francis Bacon, philosopher and statesman.

"A library is thought in cold storage" - Herbert Louis Samuel, statesman and philosopher.

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them" - Mark Twain.

"I cannot live without books" - Thomas Jefferson, in an 1815 letter to John Adams.

"Literature is news that stays news" - Ezra Pound, poet and critic.

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read" - Abraham Lincoln.

"My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out" - Dylan Thomas, poet.

"In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read ... It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we will live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish" - S.I. Hiyakawa, semanticist and U.S. senator.

"Every man who knows how to read has the power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting" - Aldous Huxley, novelist.

"In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others" - Andre Maurois, novelist and biographer.

"If the writings of the Greeks agree with the Koran they are superfluous and need not be preserved; if they disagree they are pernicious, and ought not to be preserved" - Attributed to the Caliph Omar, who ordered the burning of manuscripts in the library at Alexandria. The quotation is believed to be a fabrication, but epitomizes the reasoning of book-burners everywhere.

"Beware the man of one book" - Isaac Disraeli, author and illustrator.

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed" - Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail" - Alfred Whitney Griswold, essayist.

"We all know that books burn - yet we have greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory" - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands ... so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion" - Umberto Eco, novelist, on librarians of the year 1327.

"It's like walking into a cathedral ... . It reminds me that what I do in the world is a valuable and important thing" - Mary Gordon, librarian, speaking of the New York Public Library.

"Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library" - Barbara Tuchman, historian and author.

"This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum" - Elbert Hubbard, writer and craftsman.

"Why is there not a Majesty's library in every county town? There is a Majesty's jail and gallows in every one" - Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist.

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, their only capital" - Thomas Jefferson.