Quotes from Samuel Johnson's books, and about them
Little Women on Rasselas: “Laurence seemed to suspect that something was brewing in her mind, for after taking several brisk turns about the room, he faced round on her, speaking so abruptly that Rasselas tumbled face downward on the floor.”
Jane Eyre on Rasselas: “I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood I could see the title--it was "Rasselas;" a name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive.”
Middlemarch on Rasselas: “He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it.”
The Mill on the Floss on Rasselas: “Beauties of the Spectator," "Rasselas," "Economy of Human Life," "Gregory's Letters,"--she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the "Christian Year,"--that seemed to be a hymnbook, and she laid it down again; but _Thomas à Kempis?”
The Return of the Native on Rasselas: “His sight, like the wings in Rasselas, though useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait, and he found that when a little practice should have hardened his palms against blistering he would be able to work with ease.”
Tono-Bungay on Rasselas: “Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire's "Candide," and "Rasselas;" and, vast book though it was, I really believe I read, in a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to end, and even with some reference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon--in twelve volumes.”
Cranford on Rasselas: “Fetch me ‘Rasselas,’ my dear, out of the book-room.”
Washington: A Life on Rasselas: “s an avid newspaper reader and kept up with some of the best literature imported from London in the 1760s, including Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, as well as gothic romance novels.”
The Common Reader: Second Series on Rasselas: “Directly she read Rasselas, enlarged and swollen sentences formed on the tip of her childish pen in the manner of Dr.”
The Pirate on Rasselas: “I have possessed the regulation of the weather and the distribution of the seasons. The sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my command, have poured forth their waters. RASSELAS.”