"Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."
Literature quotes
Literature
4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Literature
Browse quotes that often appear alongside literature — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Literature quotes (page 18 of 201)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love."
"The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him."
"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."
"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent."
"If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well."
"And the commencement of atonement is the sense of its necessity."
"There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master."
"This is slavery, not to speak one's thought."
"Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive."
"In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house."
"There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies."
"Right is its own defense."
"Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness."
"It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward."
"There is nothing new in art except talent."
"My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have."
"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries."
"It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying."
"I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate."