Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.

A perfect judge will read each word of wit with the same spirit that its author writ.

A person dishonored is worst than dead.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity he is continually informing and filling some other body.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.

A popular feel for scientific endeavors should, if possible, be restored given the needs of the twenty-first century. This does not mean that every literature major should take a watered-down physics course or that a corporate lawyer should stay abreast of quantum mechanics. Rather, it means that an appreciation for the methods of science is a useful asset for a responsible citizenry. What science teaches us, very significantly, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein's life.

Appearances are often deceiving.

A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride.

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well.

Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

A recurring theme in the literature of secular humanism is the harsh assault upon traditional religion, especially Christianity.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

A reporter's ability to keep the bond of confidentiality often enables him to learn the hidden or secret aspects of government.

A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete or a new canvas to an artist.

Art and literature need extreme sociality to a degree that even dolphins don't have. We are the only large mammalian species that has such intense sociality. There are some small mammals that have become eusocial - the mole rats - but that's a different thing. Humans are able to understand one another at very high levels, to cooperate in very large groups. Humans depend on one another in ways that are an absolute precondition to sharing the kinds of information that makes narrative possible.

Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

Art - I had never thought of that as a career because it was like something I did so naturally, and it was fluid, and it is. And even though I still admire literature as the superior art form, I have to admit that art, for me, that's it; that's what I'm good at, and that's what I should be concentrating on.

Art is the daughter of freedom.

Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.

Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

As a filmmaker coming from one of the youngest lands in the world, New Zealand - safe, green and democratic - I was intrigued by Afghanistan, with its literature and poetry, its old land and its deep history.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

As a result, the highly civilized man can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he has a great advantage over the savage.

As a reporter, I approach every situation knowing that everyone has his or her own agenda. It's not a bad thing; it's just a fact.

As a student in England, I studied French and English literature. I read L'Etranger and the rhythm of the novel felt familiar to me - very African.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

As countless as grains of sand by the sea are human passions, and they all differ; all of them, vile or lofty, begin by being under a man's control and then become his terrible masters. Blessed is he who has chosen the most lofty of passions: his immeasurable bliss grows and multiplies tenfold with every hour and minute, and he penetrates deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his soul.

A security cam is one small part of a much larger universe of cams. The much larger effect, socially, politically and economically, is going to come from a much larger trend.

As for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in allthings, there is only the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false.

As far as I have been able to understand, the Japanese seem to keep things close to the vest. Friendly but remote and polite to the point of being invisible. It is in the music, literature, film and art that the Japanese really seem to express themselves.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

A script is not a piece of literature, it's a process.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.

As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music or literature. It wasn't until my 30s that I began a profession in music.

As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn't much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.

As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.