Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

[Vathek] has, in parts, been called, but to some judgments, never is, dull: it is certainly in parts, grotesque, extravagant and even nasty. But Beckford could plead sufficient "local colour" for it, and a contrast, again almost Shakespearean, between the flickering farce atrocities of the beginning and the sombre magnificence of the end. Beckford's claims, in fact, rest on the half-score or even half-dozen pages towards the end: but these pages are hard to parallel in the later literature of prose fiction.

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.

Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.

Victor Saville was bad news because he wanted money just to do one big picture.

Very often I hear talk about female literature, or femininity in literature. It's a categorization I am not sure about. Maybe there are a few elements that distinguish women's observations from men's, like the ability to notice some fine details.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

Virtue is not a chemical product...it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.

Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations.

Warfare has been marvelously developed. It will soon be impossible to raise it to further heights.

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize "world peace" even when we get it.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.

Watergate provides a model case study of the interaction and powers of each of the branches of government. It also is a morality play with a sad and dramatic ending.

Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity.

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.

Wealth should not be seized, but the god-given is much better.

We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.

We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.

We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

We are not punished for our sins, but by them.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

We are infected by our own misunderstandin g of how our own minds work.