Literature Quotes

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.

The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Those are the two things: a sense of loving and being loved, and being creative - that is what life is made up of, and what literature reminds us of.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

Kids' literature now is dystopian, you know.

The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

I was timid and frightened as a child. Yours truly did not shin up mountains or do any other kind of adventurous stuff.

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

It is fortunate that Literature is in no ways injured by the follies of Collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily defend the good.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge.

I sailed through my childhood with a complete lack of any drama.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

Managing bottom-up change is its own art.

Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

The first is the law, the last prerogative.

I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives--philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social.

If I'm in danger then it's usually my fault and it's up to me to get myself out of it. I am not in it just to get an adrenalin rush. No way!

A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.

This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.

Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.

I just happen to like the work. I like preparing for a role. I like reading. I like analyzing. I like literature. I like emotions. I like working with other actors.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

I wanted to learn a few foreign languages, and therefore I had to go abroad.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.

So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.