Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites...some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way.

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.

The battle is all over except the 'shouting' when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

The battlefield is first and foremost horrible stenches, not sights, not sounds, but stenches. They don't travel well into literature.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.

The best of seers is he who guesses well.

The best of men cannot suspend their fate; The good die early, and the bad die late.

The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.

The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies.

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities.

The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature.

The borderline between prose and poetry is one of those fog-shrouded literary minefields where the wary explorer gets blown to bits before ever seeing anything clearly. It is full of barbed wire and the stumps of dead opinions.

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.

The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.

The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.

The busy have no time for tears.

The Cardinal is at his wit's end - it is true that he had not far to go.

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

The central symbol for Canada-and this based on numerous instances of its occurrence in both English and French Canadian literature-is undoubtedly Survival, la Survivance.

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.

The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

The children don't wear their masks at home and in controlled surroundings.

The classic literature is always modern.

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort - the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing - the opening a wonderfully joyous moment.

The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

The cinema, as literature, as all the plastic arts, do not exist outside of a critical system that allows us to study them.

The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula.

The concept of industry domination of regulatory agencies was well known and documented in the literature by the 1960s.

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.