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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"The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded."
"Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young."
"Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes."
"What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?"
"What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions."
"It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later."
"Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric."
"The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family."
"We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so."
"Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked."
"The literature is like that - they [unions] are constantly talking about the masses, the danger they pose, and how to control them. They understand what they're doing, and they're very class conscious. They press policies which work for their interests."
"All you have to do is read the business literature. In the 1930s they were very frightened and they were concerned about how the rising power of the masses was hazardous to industrialists."
"I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature."
"I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature."
"I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world."
"There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold."
"God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us."
"Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know."
"All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all."
"It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature."
