The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI, by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450
Books Quotes
Samuel Johnson is on this page more than once for good reason. In The Rambler (1750) he wrote that no place gives a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. Boswell (1791) has him saying that a man ought to read just as inclination leads him, because what he reads as a task will do him little good. Alberto Manguel, Emerson and Northrop Frye are among the most-quoted writers here, which is what you would expect from people who spent their working lives reading.
Two entries are flagged as misattributed. The quip about a manuscript that is both good and original, with the good parts not original and the original parts not good, is credited to Johnson. “Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!” is credited to General Patton.
As quoted in Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky
But what I realized was, I don’t really care about selling books,”
....the weapons were pens, books, chalks and blackboards, the heroes simple teachers.
O little booke, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede?
Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book!
Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.