"Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear."
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Literature quotes
Literature
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Literature quotes (page 38 of 201)
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"It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion."
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"In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is-Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily."
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"the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world."
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"Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift."
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"I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more."
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"The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination."
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"The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions."
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"It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts."
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"My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize."
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"The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems."
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"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life."
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"One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good."
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"Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge."
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"While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful."
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"He who awaits much can expect little."
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"The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."
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"Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability."
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"Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction."
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"It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam at the people they've met before."
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