Literature quotes
4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside literature — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point."
"I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown."
"You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art."
"What good is it to live a life that brings pains?"
"Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly."
"For a murderous blow let murderous blow atone."
"The wisest of the wise may err."
"In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go."
"Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to."
"You must consider the bottom line, but make it integrity before profits."
"Without literature, life is hell."
"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."
"The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything"
"My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger."
"Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly."
"When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain."
"Our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever."
"This profession [photography] is deserving of attention and respect equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and architecture."
"It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook."
"I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty."
