Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

The desire to create literature leads to frights, grunts, and coy looks.

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.

The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

The devil is compromise.

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.

The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.

The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.

The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.

The elegance and the quality - the talent is always in the literature. I start with the word and I base everything on that. It doesn't make any difference to me.

The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people.

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

The East was no longer a threat to the western world, and when there's nothing to fear we turn our backs, we look elsewhere. Eastern literature is still the poor relative that everyone wants to forget, the Cinderella who hasn't (yet) found her prince.

The executive branch maneuvered this result deftly.

The evils of mortals are manifold; nowhere is trouble of the same wing seen.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

The excellence of this important contribution to genre literature CANNOT be overstated A masterwork.

The failure of modern living is the failure of the imagination...Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.

The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.

The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in the world and our relations with the world.

The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.

The first is the law, the last prerogative.

The first time I ask him, have you had your cheekbones raised, have you had your nose changed? He denied it all. I was asking him to compare his face with what it looked like years ago.

The fey in this country keep to themselves, and are a separate nation, much like the American Indians, but with even more autonomy.

The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.

The first thing I did when I sold my book was buy a new wedding ring for my wife and asked her to marry me all over again.

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

The freedom to be an individual is the essence of America.

The future belongs to crowds.

The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.

The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously.

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.