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.
[The Koran is] not a religious book, but a manual for conquering other people's countries.
The interpretation reflects my deepest respect for the major composition of the musical literature.
Sybil had an unreal, larger-than-life feeling . . . as if she were a person in a book.
‘Internationalism’ is a way of reading, and not a demography of readership ...’
What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.