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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.

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Most quoted on books:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson

We teach and instruct one another only through writings; we learn to know nature and man only through writings. We work and relax, edify and amuse ourselves through overmuch writing. ... Everything is dead letter; the spirit of living conversation has vanished.

Moses Mendelssohn

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

Emily Dickinson

Go, little Book! From this my solitude
I cast thee on the Waters,—go thy ways:
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days.
Be it with thee according to thy worth:
Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth.

Robert Southey

Public libraries are a cornerstone of democracy. They are part of the public commons, a sanctuary for the free exchange of information and ideas. But they are under threat. From book banning to government surveillance, libraries have been a target in the "war on terror."

Amy Goodman Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes In Extraordinary Times with David Goodman (2008)

Books are the greatest and the most satisfactory of recreations. I mean the use of books for pleasure. Without books, without having acquired the power of reading for pleasure, none of us can be independent, but if we can read we have a sure defence against boredom in solitude.

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon Recreation (1919)

At home these men’s works [Kant, Schiller, Goethe] were kept in the bookcase with the green glass panes in Papa’s study, and Törless knew this bookcase was never opened except to display its contents to a visitor. It was like the shrine of some divinity to which one does not readily draw nigh and which one venerates only because one is glad that thanks to its existence there are certain things one need no longer bother about.

Robert Musil The Confusions of Young Törless (1906)

Bob seems to know almost everything; but he doesn’t know when or why people stopped reading. “Most people are too lazy,” he said. “They only want distractions.”

Walter Tevis Mockingbird (1980)

O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the Streete cries all about.
Where I maie Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, is better to me than Golde.

John Wilson

Don't you give up on this [library] card. Because books can be solid gold. Yeah, the great ones have gotten us through the nights for centuries. Just give a writer an hour to hook you and if he can't wish him the best of luck and find someone else.

Anthony Hopkins

The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian, grounds. My own conviction is that if English is to be thus justified it must be primarily by what I am terming the discipline of ideas.

Irving Babbitt English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)

Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth ages. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.

Walter Tevis Mockingbird (1980)

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits—so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth—
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh (1856)

Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature.

Arthur Eddington

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

William Styron Writers at Work (1958)

The book that I shall make people read is the book of the heart, which holds the key to the mystery of life.

Meher Baba

A writer is in the end not his books, but his myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others.

V. S. Naipaul Steinbeck in Monterey (1970)

A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people, as no historical reconstruction can.

Edith Hamilton The Roman Way (1932)

When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.

Philip Roth

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