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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:

Guerrilla ontology
The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'"

Robert Anton Wilson The Illuminati Papers (1980)

What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books.

Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Painting, literature, music, are more closely allied than the public usually admit. They are merely different means of expression.

Auguste Rodin

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.

A. J. Ayer

Everything that's in [my] books comes out of what I've seen, or touched, or felt, or smelt, and if I had one wish it would be that the books were fiction.

Andrew Vachss

The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you'll go.

Dr. Seuss I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

"Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about; the first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."

Jack Kerouac The Dharma Bums (1958)

But the old man had provided his kids with one priceless gift: He’d encouraged them to read, and he didn’t bother too much about the content, subscribing to the theory that good books ultimately speak for themselves.

Jack McDevitt Ancient Shores (1996)

The way to improve our schools is not more money, but the reintroduction of moral and spiritual values, as well as the four "R's": reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic, and Rush.

Rush Limbaugh

If you are looking at fine buildings or the literature of the period, you have to be aware that you are only dealing with the mindset of the elite.

Richard Miles

There was an Indian edition of most of my books, but it didn't make much of a splash.

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

I have 5,000 books in my home, 1,000 of which I feel are close to my heart. They have always shown me the way. Books are my great passion; I could not live without them.

Brunello Cucinelli

When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway.

John Ashbery The Paris Review (1983)

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry;
The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy;
The books that people talk about we never can recall;
And the books that people give us — oh, they’re the worst of all!

Carolyn Wells

I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins: Atheist academic calls for religion 'to be offended at every opportunity (2016)

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

George Santayana Introduction to The Ethics of Spinoza (1910)

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

V. S. Naipaul

The place was part museum, part library, and part archive; I loved it at first sight...and smell, for here there were thousands of printed books, many very old indeed, and nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books.

Dan Simmons The Fall of Hyperion (1990)

A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and English.

Charles William Eliot

"With a book and a steeple, with a bell and a key
they would bind it forever, but they can't," said he.
"Oh, the book it will perish and the steeple will fall,
but the light will be shining at the end of it all."

Sydney Carter George Fox (1966)

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