Best 5099 quotes in «literature quotes» category

True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.

True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

Trust funds can never be a substitute for a fund of trust.

Truth is always a delusion.

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Truth is life's most precious commodity.

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Truth never was indebted to a lie

Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

Twitter reminds me of an era in French literature - Emile Zola and Honoré de Balzac - and the beginning of modernity and gossip. They had these fashion magazines of the time on display with all of the Emile Zola references.

Two years ago I was on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to my close friend, the writer Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned in China. To me it was confirmation that universal values and a moral code do exist, and that the point of the Nobel Prize is to encourage writers to stand up for this moral code. Last Thursday I was once again on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Prize for Literature had gone to Mo Yan. He is a state poet. I am utterly bewildered. Do these universal values not exist after all?

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.

Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.

Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny.

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.

Unfortunately, little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact, some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace.

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.

Universal peace sounds ridiculous to the head of an average family.

Unless you're doing a feature piece, which is going to be longer, and you have more time to get into stuff.

Unlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary.

Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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

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!

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

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

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