Literature Quotes

Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics.

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty.

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to be a perversion.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.

Literature is an investment of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent times.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love, or life.

There is great force hidden in a sweet command.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

Libraries are the wardrobes of literature.

You don't say, like the Bush crowd, 'I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not.'

I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems.

Walking into a room filled with people you don't know but who know you brings out your worst vulnerabilities.

I hadn't realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is.

When for so long you can't get a job for reasons that seem specious, you you finally do have it, you are constantly afraid of losing it.

News events cannot be controlled, nor can newscasts be mapped out like entertainment shows.

The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

My weapon is literature

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

He who awaits much can expect little.

Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

Common sense is compelled to make its way without the enthusiasm of anyone.

Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

Men and women should stay apart, till their hearts grow gentle towards one another again.