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.
A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.
At its heart, this book is about where this new left has come from, and where it might be going.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language — it is not every one that can read in it.
I think no book is more stimulating than the history of a devoted and successful life.
Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.
If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.