Literature Quotes

What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined.

Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be.

Revolutions are not made with literature. Revolutions equal gunfire.

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.

I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

Ideas are to literature what light is to painting.

No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.

When I look at something, it is certain that for an instant I am one with what I see.

Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push, and you push alone.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

Robots do not hold on to life. They can't. They have nothing to hold on with - no soul, no instinct. Grass has more will to live than they do.

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

Silence is the wit of fools.

The higher the building the lower the morals.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?

Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable.

If I hear the word 'perky' again, I'll puke.

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.

A day without an argument is like an egg without salt.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

I'm into books – I love literature, so I toyed with the idea of being an English teacher. I had a fantastic English teacher at school. I think great English teachers make the world go round.

Newscasters cannot call attention to themselves by being too attractive or too unattractive.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

Every man needs his Siren To check his courage and strength When he hears her song In his travels through the unknown.

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.