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.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.
Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.