"What is the use of a book", thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
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.
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
For what is lacking now is not quibbles; nay, the books of the Stoics are full of quibbles.
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
No. Books take a long time, and I don't get to hear the laughs.
A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.
We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.