Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

When I went through the break-up, I really looked for some kind of music, or art or literature that could say, "I've been in the same situation." I couldn't find anything at the moment, and that made me really sad.

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen.

When literature exists, perhaps we do not notice how important it is, but when it does not exist, our lives become coarsened and brutal. For this reason, I am proud of my profession, but also aware of its importance.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

When tempest tossed, embrace chaos

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes.

When the pressure comes, preferences give way while convictions hold firm.

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

When we seem to have won or lost in terms of certainties, we must, as literature teachers in the classroom, remember such warnings -- let literature teach us that there are no certainties, that the process is open, and that it may be altogether salutary that it is so.

When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.

When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly ­surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.

When you deal with your brother, be pleasant, but get a witness.

When you make his sandwiches, put a sexy or loving note in his lunch box.

When you kill somebody in the movies, it matters, whereas in literature it can be allegorical.

When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

When you read the psychedelic literature, there is a distinction between the so-called natural psychedelics and synthetic psychedelics that are artificially produced.

When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.

Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.

Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.

Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature the notion of infinity presents itself.

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only levels, is something that literature cannot decide. Literature recognizes rather the *reality of the levels.*