LITERARY UPHOLSTERERS
Our booksellers here at London disgrace literature by the trash they bespeak to be written, and at the same time prevent everything else from being sold. They are little more or less than upholsterers, who sell sets or bodies of arts and sciences for furniture; and the purchasers, for I am very sure they are not readers, buy only in that view. I never thought there was much merit in reading: but yet it is too good a thing to be put upon no better footing than damask and mahogany.—H. Walpole. Earl of Orford (Letter to Sir David Dalrymple)
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No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.—S. Smith. Memoirs.