Inscription on St. Isidore's Library. Bishop of Seville (c.570-636) :
"Here are many things, sacred or worldly / If any of these writings please, take and learn / You see before you fields with thorns as well as flowers / If you don't want thorns, choose roses."1
ALSO, a round-about way of saying 'has cape divitias, semper contemme caducas'; that is, choose
what is rich, ignore what is fleeting. (A 'jedi' Stoic little maxim, but kinda compelling) In the library world more
broadly, however, then as now, it also means don't even think about telling me what can and can't go on my
shelves which has sadly always been a problem as there's eternally some bonehead
administrator/official/citizen trying to get all moralistic on the collection you are so lovingly trying to
care for. In Isidore's case, censorship and disruption of knowledge would have been an ever greater concern,
because burnt books were essentially lost books, as each was a unique manuscript and almost impossible to
replace.
See also : A Brief History of Books or Medieval Manuscript Production (I)
Source : Handbook of Medieval Library History. Karl Christ. (Scarecrow : 1984)
1And though obvious deference must go to Byzantine on the Latin, here it is old-school: "Sunt hic plure
sacra, sunt mudialia plura; ex his si qua placent carmina, tolle, lege; prata vides plena spinis et copia floris; si
non vis spinas sumere, suma rosas."