Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

According to the United Nations' latest count, of the approximately 3,000 languages spoken in the world today, only some 78 have a literature. Of those 78, a scant five or six enjoy a truly international audience.

A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.

Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.

A country house is not the same as a house in a country and a hotel in the country is not the same as a hotel in a town but is it in a small town.

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

A critic is a lug-worm in the liver of literature.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Actually, I'm frequently described as the UK's only translator of Korean literature, but even that isn't accurate - Agnita Tennant is UK-based, Janet Poole is British though lives in Toronto, Brother Anthony was born here though is now a naturalised Korean citizen. There's also Chi-young Kim and Sora Kim-Russell, who are younger and do fiction for commercial houses.

A day is sometimes our mother, sometimes our stepmother.

Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.

A day without an argument is like an egg without salt.

A diary means yes indeed.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

Admire a small ship, but put your freight in a large one; for the larger the load, the greater will be the profit upon profit.

Advances in technology neither impede nor augment literature.

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

A fast is not a hunger strike. Fasting submits to God's commands. A hunger strike makes God submit to our demands.

A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.

A fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.

A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu.

After a great deal of discussion in Soviet literature about the correct definition of a combination, it was decided that from the point of view of a methodical approach it was best to settle on this definition - A combination is a forced variation with a sacrifice.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

A gene can be either dominant or recessive, depending on which type of gene it is.

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

A great speech is literature.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.

A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone.

A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor.

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

All great literature has an uncreeded and luminous theology behind it... Art [is] a form of active prayer.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.