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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.

Random quote on Books

Most quoted on books:

A blessed companion is a book,—a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend.

Douglas William Jerrold

If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.

John Lancaster Spalding Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Barger thought Hunter provoked Junkie George so that the beating could be used as a gimmick to promote the book.

William McKeen Outlaw Journalist (2008)

I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.

Lewis H. Lapham Money And Class In America (1989)

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Alain de Botton The Consolations of Philosophy (2000)

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

A book brings its own history to the reader.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometric progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

One can transform a place by reading in it.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

From its very start, reading is writings apotheosis.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users.

Alberto Manguel A History of Reading (1996)

It is worthy of notice that many of this generation, fed on text-books, on anthologies and on abstracts, cannot read.

Vincent Massey Speaking Of Canada (1959)

I love to live vicariously, in a book or a holo, but I think I can stand one dose of reality before it’s my time.

Justina Robson Natural History (2003)

I am the penny whistle of American literature.

Nelson Algren

Many are the consolations of literature, and not the least such solace occurs when an annoyingly virtuous hero succumbs to carnal temptation.

James K. Morrow The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)

One can travel for weeks with baseball men and see no books at all.

Roger Kahn

Each book of the New Testament is in its own way a methodical interpretation of the Christian experience of revelation.

Roger Haight

As Adorno wrote of Anna Freud’s book, it evinces “the reduction of psychoanalysis to a conformist interpretation of the reality principle.”

Russell Jacoby Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975)

Literature is most social when it is least social.

Russell Berman Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007)

As Roland Barthes said, those who do not re-read condemn themselves to reading the same story everywhere: "they recognize what they already think and know."

Bernard Williams Truth and Truthfulness (2002)

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