Literature Quotes

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.

No one who loves life can ignore literature, and no one who loves literature can ignore life.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

Drab Habitation of Whom? Tabernacle or Tomb - or Dome of Worm - or Porch of Gnome - or some Elf's Catacomb?

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

Everyone lives by selling something.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.

You cannot go outside of A and Z in the realm of literature; likewise Christ Jesus is First and Last of God's new creation, and all that is in between; you cannot get outside of that.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Never be ashamed! There's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth bothering with.

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

Do not let a flattering woman coax and wheedle you and deceive you; she is after your barn.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

I felt the comics grew because they became the common man's literature, the common man's art, the common man's publishing.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.

Maybe if literature was prohibited the same way as cocaine, people out of pure curiosity would try to get a couple of lines

The most virtuous women have within them something that is never chaste.

It has been my experience that if we make the effort to listen to people when we meet them, and work to get to know them a little, it is then easy to find something likeable in practically anyone.

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. Alas!

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

Man needs music, literature, and painting - all those oases of perfection that make up art - to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Eugene is located in western Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.