Literature Quotes

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow - security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself.

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.

Some 43 percent of voters in union households voted for President Bush in 2004, according to exit poll data.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.

True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness.

There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

It is best to do things systematically, since we are only human, and disorder is our worst enemy.

Crying over what's gone won't find the present.

God will lead you into a deliverance where the means that delivers you will be those who would destroy you.

Creativity in any form stimulates creativity in every form, music, arts, literature... I find inspiration in anything. It's all the same.

True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level.

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.

Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.

In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.

Be able to describe anything visual, such as a street scene, in words that convey your meaning.

Be able to draw an illustration as least well enough to get your point across to another person.

Know the difference between principles based on right or wrong vs. principles based on personal gain, and consider the basis of your own principles.

In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them

I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time... All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.

We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.

One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

We've got to have a dream if we are going to make a dream come true.

Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.

I read a lot of heavy literature when I'm on set, so on holiday I want to indulge in something light-hearted.

It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of - another Jew?

In every genre of biblical literature and every stage of biblical history, God is seen pouring out his grace on his people for the sake of his glory among all peoples.

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball.

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature and one of only three now writing whose work makes me truly happy to be a reader.