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 know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but it is all necessary.
I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.
All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.
She loaned him books. Worlds were revealed to him: worlds piled on worlds, worlds without end.
To me, the Bible is a book. Important, no doubt, but a book.
I’m a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.
He seemed to get along with just about everybody. Which, in my book, makes him suspect.