Books without the knowledge of life are useless; for what should books teach but the art of living?
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the “last” page
The book which is read most, is read by few, compared with those that read it not; and of those few, the greater part peruse it with dispositions that very little favour their own improvement.
That book is good in vain which the reader throws away.
People seldom read a book, which is given to them. The way to spread a word is to sell it at a low price.
Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators.
It is, perhaps, not considered through how many hands a book often passes, before it comes into those of the reader; or what part of the profit each hand must retain, as a motive for transmitting it to the next.
Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
On biography: It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him.
