Literature Quotes

Because our choices are largely based on survival. But if life is eternal, life is not a question.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

Dreams are our only geography—our native land.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

Our Lord never condemned the fig tree because it brought forth so much fruit that some fell to the ground and spoiled. He only cursed it when it was barren.

Fair and softly goes far.

Lovers of literature will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism.

Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end...

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

By the mid 1920s the typical American town was in full sexual bloom. The change came with erotic fashions, literature and movies, and an unsuspected sexual aid, the automobile.

People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

The profoundest of all sensualities is the sense of truth and the next deepest sensual experience is the sense of justice.

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

Great literature, if we read it well, opens us up to the world and makes us more sensitive to it, as if we acquired eyes that could see through things and ears that could hear smaller sounds.

What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

When a man can observe himself suffering and is able, later, to describe what he's gone through, it means he was born for literature.

To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.

We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.

Literature exists because the world isn't enough.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.

The literature of disease is more interesting to me than all the healthy books.

Being a systematic theologian allows me to indulge all my interests - in literature, film, art, music - by relating them all to God.

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.