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.
I never talked to anyone about my reading; the need to share came afterwords.
I shall take leave to think the worse, rather of the practice of the men than of the book of God.
If you give the royalties from your book, I shall give the land.
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.
I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
When you write children’s literature, you write for different ages.
Undervaluing someone’s book is like trampling the brain of a wise person.