Literature Quotes
Most popular literature quotes
Cultivate literature and useful knowledge, for the purpose of qualifying the rising generation for patrons of good government, virtue and happiness.
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
Life is a cornfield, but literature is that shot of whiskey that's been distilled down.
Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
All literature is gossip.
Ideas are to literature what light is to painting.
To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.
Literature ... the Promised Land in which language becomes what it really ought to be.
The finer literature, indeed, is characterized by a certain suffusion of the feminine flavor, the finer, the more ideal, thought plumed with sentiment.
Literature is the lie that tells the truth.
Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind.
What do things signify, what does the world signify? All literature is this question, but we must immediately add, for this is what constitutes its specialty, literature is this question minus its answer.
Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.
Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.
All literature is, finally, autobiographical.
A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.
Literature, by the way, may be defined as the aesthetic exploitation of language.
Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.
Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.
To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.
Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.
The charms of money are distinctly under-represented in literature. There are no songs or poems extolling its virtues. This seems on the face of it strange. The claims of money to be celebrated in verse might well seem to be no less than those of faithful dogs, beautiful women, or jugs of wine.
A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them.
Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil.
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper—whether little or great, it belongs to literature.
Literature is my Utopia.
Literature is a splendid mistress, but a bad wife.
Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside.
The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.
Literature is analysis after the event.
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination.
Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders.
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
Literature was born not the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Literature is food for the soul and the heart.
Literature is a defense against the attacks of life.
Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing.
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Literature is news that STAYS news.
There is nothing like literature. I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.
Literature is the memory of humanity.
Literature usually begets literature.
Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification. The job of the writer is to make it harder to believe the mental despoilers.
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
Literature is the record of our discontent.
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.
