One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.
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.
This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.
Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while.
To whom am I to present my pretty new book, freshly smoothed off with dry pumice stone?