Literature Quotes

Literature has become merely a tool for culture studies.

Stories shape the world.

I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it.

Literature is the product of a deep-seated need for honesty. Hence, those who lie most are struck most deeply by it, and those who are honest have no need for it.

Of Books and Scribes there are no end:This Plague--and who can doubt it?Dismays me so, I've sadly pennedAnother book about it.

Of everythingI have ever endured, YOUareMy Favourite Tragedy.

The thing American people fear about corporations is that they might achieve too much power. We have an antipathy to power even as we admire it.

Starving artist: starving for affection, starving for attention

We dreamt of a crappy apartment somewhereMaking love while we let the midnight airFlow through the open window, into our closed heartsLeft bitter from heartbreak and too much time apart

In the best day.

When, while, while when you walk.

No camouflage.

Will I ever see the mountains or am I doomed to roam the flatlands?

Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.

True love finds its own waysTo spread goodness, always.

Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them.

Behind every Plagiarism there is Google

Now what I like about lit is that though you feel you know the characters involved, you don’t – you get all the benefits of having a relationship, with none of the mess.

And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?"If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.

In literature, as in love, one can only speak for himself.

You either see it or you don't

I want all the books on the she

What would be the description of happines? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.

The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through...ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly.

We bite back the things we can't say and we cushion every surface for the inevitable moment when they all come fighting out.

Great Literature is simply language charged to the utmost with meaning

You have never asked for anything, yet you have become an albatross around my neck. Your bony arms are knotted behind my head, I walk bowed under the weight of you.

We are destroying all esthetic standards in the name of social justice.

Greatness recognizes greatness, and is shadowed by it.

Shakespeare and his few peers invented all of us.

Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.

Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act. I say that because of the prolonged (or intense) exposure of one mind to another.

Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for people to endure nobly.

Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement.

Popular versus literary—a false divide?

Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation.

Literature tries to express the intricate inner beauties of life. Philosophy tries to explain the intricate inner beauties and conflicts of thoughts.

Literature endures like the universal spirit, And its breath becomes a part of the vitals of all men.

She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.

Literature is an invitation to people to discover the world of others and the world of others is the best source to understand and to improve our own world!

What surfaced was the surprising power of our cultural heritage.

It’s easy to write a sentence, paragraph, or book. What’s difficult is writing the best sentence, paragraph, or book, you can write.

The cultivation of literary pursuits forms the basis of all sciences, and in their perfection consist the reputation and prosperity of kingdoms.

A constant discomfort derives from this--writing these sentences, or any other for that matter--I am writing an ad for the war. With that, every utterance about freedom finishes.

There is the outside of a story, and the inside of a story... One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.

Shakespeare's work had a liberating influence.

John Quincy Adams strove to escape commonplace thoughts.

Life is a book. We are writing the stories of our lives.

Rather than pound or a national mind that he believed had been closed by his critics, John Quincy Adams decided to seek a place in the is the esteem of future generations.