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.
He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.
Books are not made for furniture but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
On this list of bad words from good books, the worst of all is 'measurement'.
I have always preferred maps to books. They don't answer you back.
I seek occasional relief in old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring.
To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.
You should stay off television. You should stay off the book covers.