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.
Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise.
What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!
You can have as much fun in a library as you can at the cinema, and it doesn’t cost you anything.
Some said, "John, print it;" others said, "Not so."
Some said, "It might do good;" others said, "No."
Books give not wisdom where was none before,
But where some is, there reading makes it more.
The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.
Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.
It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith.