“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”

Book I : The Beginnings, Ch. V : The Baptism Of The Penguins
Penguin Island (1908)
Context: Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them.
Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus:
"Inhabitants of this island," said he, "although you be of small stature, you look less like a band of fishermen and mariners than like the senate of a judicious republic. By your gravity, your silence, your tranquil deportment, you form on this wild rock an assembly comparable to the Conscript Fathers at Rome deliberating in the temple of Victory, or rather, to the philosophers of Athens disputing on the benches of the Areopagus. Doubtless you possess neither their science nor their genius, but perhaps in the sight of God you are their superiors. I believe that you are simple and good. As I went round your island I saw no image of murder, no sign of carnage, no enemies' heads or scalps hung from a lofty pole or nailed to the doors of your villages. You appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter into your souls."
Now what he had taken for men of small stature but of grave bearing were penguins whom the spring had gathered together, and who were ranged in couples on the natural steps of the rock, erect in the majesty of their large white bellies. From moment to moment they moved their winglets like arms, and uttered peaceful cries. They did not fear men, for they did not know them, and had never received any harm from them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that reassured the most timid animals and that pleased these penguins extremely.

pg 28
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight

Socrates, 16.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Source: 1990s, "It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp," 1993, p. 21

About Michael Heseltine, according to Alan Clark in his diaries. Clark called it "snobby but cutting".
Alan Clark Diaries: In Power 1983-1992 (Wednesday 17 June 1987) 1993 Weidenfield & Nicholson

Source: Clockwork Angel

Attributed by Clark in his diaries to Michael Jopling. The full quote is "An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing." https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/aug/07/bbc.politicsandthemedia
Misattributed

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings