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.
What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?
We all have slumbering realms of sensibility which can be coaxed into wakefulness by books.
The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.
The book is a private confessional form that provides a “point of view.”
I don't see why escapist literature should not also be a work of art.
There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven.
Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever we're opened, we're red.
A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
When people say that the Bible and politics don't mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading.