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Book Quotes by Samuel Johnson
- One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to…
- Books without the knowledge of life are useless.
- Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed…
- People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as…
- A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we…
- You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets it on paper,…
- It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at…
- Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.
- Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion of their own abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race…
- Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.
- Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
- Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery.
- By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations of petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An…
- To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the…
- But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they…
- When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour…
- Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the…
- Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more…
- Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is…
- Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an…
More Book Quotes
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- The Imitation of Christ is a cherished treasure of the Christian world. This great book was written by a Roman Catholic monk.… — Swami Vivekananda
- Blue Book was now under direct orders to debunk. . . I remember the conversations around the conference table in which it… — J. Allen Hynek
- If people ever look down upon you for crying for fictional characters, you should give them a gentle, pitying look and feel… — Cassandra Clare
- A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us. — Franz Kafka
- Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them… — Paul Auster
- I'm not a comic book guy at all. — Darren Aronofsky