Literature Quotes
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Vigny, more secretAs if in his tower of ivory, retired before noon."N.B.: Vigny refers to Comte de Vigny, who locked himself in an ivory tower to work without the influences of man and desire. (Quote by - Charles Augustin Sainte-beuve)
Learning why one great book is just like every other great book is the key to understanding literature (Quote by - John Moschitta)
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. (Quote by - Gail Godwin)
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. (Quote by - Thomas Carruthers)
All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fiction's business to ask them. (Quote by - Richard Hughes)
Perish those who said our good things before we did. (Quote by - Donatus)
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. (Quote by - Cicero)
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation. (Quote by - H.l. Mencken)
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road. (Quote by - Stendhal)
The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. (Quote by - Aldous Huxley)
Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest. (Quote by - Charles Churchill)
If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. (Quote by - Joseph Brodsky)
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. (Quote by - Smith & Jones)
In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented. (Quote by - Northrop Frye)
An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. (Quote by - Henry Kissinger)
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition. (Quote by - Hector Louis Berlioz)
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. (Quote by - Jules Renard)
We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others. (Quote by - Elizabeth Drew)
Literary Men are . . . a perpetual priesthood. (Quote by - Thomas Carlyle)
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young. (Quote by - Henry S. Canby)
Nothing but blackness aboveAnd nothing that moves but the cars...God, if you wish for our love,Fling us a handful of stars! - Caliban in the Coal Mines. (Quote by - Louis Untermeyer)
Till last by Philip's farm I flowTo join the brimming river,For men may come and men may go,But I go on for ever.(Quote by - Lord Alfred Tennyson)
'Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes. (Quote by - Miguel De Cervantes)
All literature is political. (Quote by - Levar Burton)
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but hurled with great force. (Quote by - Jean Jacques Rousseau)
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep. (Quote by - Thomas Carruthers)
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. (Quote by - B.f. Skinner)
Literature is the question minus the answer. (Quote by - Roland Barthes)
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!A farewell, and then forever!Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,While the star of hope she leaves him?Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,Dark despair around benights me. (Quote by - Robert Burns)
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with bad. (Quote by - Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. (Quote by - Denis Diderot)
The great Cham of literature. (Quote by - Tobias George Smollett)
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn. (Quote by - Robertson Davies)
You can't teach a hunter it's wrong to kill. (Quote by - Hari Dass Baba)
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. (Quote by - Jessamyn West)
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. (Quote by - Charles Simic)
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. (Quote by - Montesquieu)
I am grieved that it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses. Well, as he brews, so shall he drink, for George again. Yet he shall hear on't, and tightly, too, an' I live, i'faith. (Quote by - Ben Johnson)
Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child. (Quote by - Anon.)
All literature is gossip. (Quote by - Truman Capote)
In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others. (Quote by - Andre Maurois)
In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. (Quote by - Dalai Lama)
One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal. (Quote by - Frank Moore Colby)
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?Since sorrow never comes too late,And happiness too swiftly flies.Thought would destroy their paradise.No more; where ignorance is bliss,'Tis folly to be wise. (Quote by - Thomas Gray)
If thou shouldst never see my face again,Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayerThan this world dreams of.(Quote by - Lord Alfred Tennyson)
The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full military array. (Quote by - Jeremy Bentham)
Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation. (Quote by - Jacques Barzun)
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. (Quote by - Italo Calvino)
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself. (Quote by - Walter Bagehot)
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself. (Quote by - Don Marquis)
If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict. (Quote by - Desiderius Erasmus)
I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself. (Quote by - Charles Dickens)
Literature is a power to be possessed, not a body of objects to be studied. (Quote by - Anon.)
For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge o flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities. (Quote by - Daniel Goleman)
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst. (Quote by - Ford Madox Ford)
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. (Quote by - G. K. Chesterton)
Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes. (Quote by - Alexandre Dumas Fils)
Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth. (Quote by - Isaac D'Israeli)
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! - Destruction of Sennacherib, The. (Quote by - George Gordon Byron)
The writer in western civilization has become not a voice of his tribe, but of his individuality. This is a very narrow-minded situation. (Quote by - Aharon Appelfeld)
The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. (Quote by - Margaret Atwood)
Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration. (Quote by - James Connolly)
I dare say I am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea, voyage after voyage. Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being truth itself, is one -- one for all men and for all occupations. (Quote by - Joseph Conrad)
The fashion of liking Racine will pass away like that of coffee.(Quote by - Mme. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sevigne)
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. (Quote by - Georges Simenon)
As I was going up the stairI met a man who wasn't thereHe wasn't there again todayI wish, I wish he'd stay away. (Quote by - Hughes Mearns)
Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation. (Quote by - Robert Fitzgerald)
A wisely chosen illustration is almost essential to fasten the truth upon the ordinary mind, and no teacher can afford to neglect this part of his preparation. (Quote by - Howard Crosby)
We cultivate literature on a little oat-meal. (Quote by - Sydney Smith)
If the radiance of a thousand sunsWere to burst at once into the skyThat would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds.(Quote by - Hindu Spiritual)
Literature is the thought of thinking Souls. (Quote by - Thomas Carlyle)
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. (Quote by - John Cotton Dana)
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason. (Quote by - Andre Gide)
Here at lastWe shall be free;the Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence:Here we may reign secure, and in my choiceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. (Quote by - John Milton)
First he wrought, and afterward he taught. (Quote by - Geoffrey Chaucer)
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine. (Quote by - Stephen Leacock)
When the waves are round me breaking,As I pace the deck alone,And my eye in vain is seekingSome green leaf to rest upon;What would not I give to wanderWhere my old companions dwell?Absence makes the heart grow fonder,Isle of Beauty, fare thee well! - Paradise Lost. (Quote by - John Milton)
I am never long, even in the society of her I love, without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. (Quote by - Lord Byron)
The philosophy exam was a piece of cake -- which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper. (Quote by - Socrates)
Literature becomes the living memory of a nation. (Quote by - Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke. (Quote by - Max Eastman)
Beauty is but a flower,Which wrinkles will devour;Brightness falls from the air;Queens have died young and fair;Dust hath closed Helen's eye.I am sick, I must die;Lord have mercy on us. (Quote by - Thomas Nash)
A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. (Quote by - Albert Camus)
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn. (Quote by - William J. Durant)
Literature is the immortality of speech. (Quote by - August Wilhelm Von Schlegel)
Literature is news that stays news. (Quote by - Ezra Pound)
Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge -- they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely. (Quote by - Vissarion Belinsky)
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. (Quote by - Thomas De Quincey)
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes. (Quote by - Thornton Wilder)
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. (Quote by - Alvin Toffler)
There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough -- the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not. (Quote by - Floyd Dell)
I can find my biography in every fable that I read. (Quote by - Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The walls are the publishers of the poor. (Quote by - Eduardo Galeano)
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors. (Quote by - Samuel Johnson)
The death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters. (Quote by - William King)
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving. (Quote by - Shecky Greene)
Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature. (Quote by - Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates... (Quote by - Francis Bacon)
Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even though they bring gifts. (Quote by - Virgil)
Accuse not nature, she hath done her part;Do thou but thine, and be not diffidentOf wisdom, she deserts thee not, if thouDismiss not her, when most thou needest her nigh,By attributing overmuch to thingsLess excellent, as thou thyself perceivest.(Quote by - John Milton)
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. (Quote by - Flannery O'connor)
'Humph!' grunted Mr. Romford, seeing his worst fears about to be realized. He had dreamt that he had timbled over a poodle in the drawing-room, and squirted a bottle of porter right into a lady's face. 'Who's goin' besides ourselves?' asked Romford, wishing to know the worst at once. 'Better be killed than frightened to death,' thought he. (Quote by - Robert Smith Surtees)
Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind. (Quote by - Maxwell Bodenheim)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword. (Quote by - G. K. Chesterton)
When a man can observe himself suffering and is able, later, to describe what he's gone through, it means he was born for literature. (Quote by - Edwin Bourdet)
Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry. (Quote by - A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare)
The great Creator to revereMust sure become the creature;But still the preaching cant forbear,And ev'n the rigid feature:Yet ne'er with wits profane to rangeBe complaisance extended;An atheist laugh's a poor exchangeFor deity offended.(Quote by - Robert Burns)
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions. (Quote by - John Morley)
Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain. (Quote by - Fawn M. Brodie)
But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with theeCame not all hell broke loose? Is pain to themLess pain, less to be fled, or thou than theyLess hardy to endure? Courageous chief,The first in flight from pain, hadst thou allegedTo thy deserted host this cause of flight,Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once. (Quote by - Cyril Connolly)
Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor. (Quote by - Isaac D'Israeli)
They castrate the books of other men in order that with the fat of their works they may lard their own lean volumes. (Quote by - Jovius)
English literature is a kind of training in social ethics. English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action. (Quote by - Marilyn Butler)
Draw a crazy picture,Write a nutty poem,Sing a mumble-gumble song,Whistle through your comb.Do a loony-goony dance'Cross the kitchen floor,Put something silly in the worldThat ain't been there before. (Quote by - Shel Silverstein)
In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write? - Nobel Lecture 2000. (Quote by - Gao Xingjian)
There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech. (Quote by - Allan Bloom)
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written. (Quote by - Mark Twain)
Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse. (Quote by - Joseph Roux)
To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature. (Quote by - Ernst Fischer)
Literature is my utopia. (Quote by - Helen Keller)
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. (Quote by - Tryon Edwards)
The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency. (Quote by - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is very high; in reality, very low. (Quote by - Aldous Huxley)
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons. (Quote by - Wilfred Owen)
The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another. (Quote by - Norman Douglas)
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories. (Quote by - Chinua Achebe)
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body. (Quote by - Francis Bacon)
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. (Quote by - Ernest Hemingway)
Five miles meandering with mazy motion, Through dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank the tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! (Quote by - Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. (Quote by - Bob Perelman)
And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Quote by - Isaiah)
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army. (Quote by - John Ashbery)
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called "Huckleberry Finn." (Quote by - Ernest Hemingway)
Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature. (Quote by - George Age)
I would live to study, and not study to live. (Quote by - Francis Bacon)
I hold it true,what'er befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.(Quote by - Lord Alfred Tennyson)
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. (Quote by - Ezra Pound)
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. (Quote by - Tom Clancy)
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple. (Quote by - Amos Bronson Alcott)
The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms. (Quote by - Muriel Rukeyser)
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. (Quote by - Joseph Joubert)
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. (Quote by - Herman Melville)
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation. (Quote by - James Fenton)
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. (Quote by - Russell Green)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. (Quote by - G. K. Chesterton)
This book fills a much-needed gap. (Quote by - Oliver Herford)
