Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

The physical act of meditating by closing one's eyes and slowing down the speed of internal thoughts - especially worrisome thinking - results in a physiological response that is well documented in the scientific literature.

The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to be a perversion.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

The point about sales is relevant because it suggests there are cultures out there that are supporting and consuming, on a vast scale, challenging works of literature. Works of literature that in the United States would sell only a few thousand copies, if they managed to find a publisher at all. The success of these texts in Spain or Italy or wherever contributes to a kind of national conversation that we're perhaps not having here in the U.S.

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

The post of honour is a private station.

The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values.

The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

The present time has one advantage over every other -- it is our own.

The primary object of a student of literature is to be delighted. His duty is to enjoy himself, his efforts should be directed to developing his faculty of appreciation.

The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.

The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice. The proof of that is the ability of a dictator to snuff out the life of a writer.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

The psalms, like no other literature, lift us to a position where we can commune with God, capturing a sense of the greatness of his kingdom and a sense of what living with him for eternity will be like.

The propaganda of communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are simply hunger, envy, death.

The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature.

The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.

The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

The question now becomes about defining your terms. What is literature? Unless we allow it to encompass the oral tradition from which it grew, which means taking it back to Homer and beyond, it demands the written word - poetry and prose. [Bob] Dylan is no slouch at the written word, both in its own right, and transcribed from his lyrics, which have often been acclaimed as poetry and may well stand up as such. But that is not his métier.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere.

The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary meritto the entire volume of sub-literary fiction produced for mass taste. But it is probably not lower than, for instance, that of another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

There are a lot of problems involved in comparative history. You never know if you're getting the comparisons weighted rightly, you're bound to dominate one literature better than another. But I do see it as one of the ways forward for the future. I think it is a very important approach.

There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.

The really amazing part, to me, was when Florida made it into the Final Four, the Democrats didn't demand a recount.

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

There are days when it seems to me that in literature the most convincing depiction of the world in which we live is to be found in the phantasmagorical kingdom through which Lewis Carroll took Alice on a tour.

There are. intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.

There are in most states one or two ministers of war, one of whom is the minister of naval affairs.

There are literally a thousand works with the title Malcolm X in them. There are over 350 films and over 320 web-based educational resources with the title Malcolm X, yet the vast majority of them are based on secondary literatures, that is, not on primary source material.

There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.