There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.

The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

Love is exclusivity, selection.

Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.

Here, then, is the point at which I see the new mission of the librarian rise up incomparably higher than all those preceding. Up until the present, the librarian has been principally occupied with the book as a thing, as a material object. From now on he must give his attention to the book as a living function. He must become a policeman, master of the raging book.