Quotes About Literature

Today literature must either be protest or consolation

Despite overwhelmingly favorable reviews, the book sold poorly. The subject was considered morbid and interested no one. If a rabbi happened to mention the book in his sermon, there were always people ready to complain that it was senseless to "burden our children with the tragedies of the Jewish past.

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed

the primary trait of young adult literature is that the author's emphasis is on plot and character and not on his own brilliance. And because few people talk about whether a young adult work is commercial or literary; the two are still in sync, and everyone's benefitting.

Authors go on writing books, and so we go on reading them. It is a sad state of affairs.

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

Books educate and inspire, and they soothe souls -- like comfort food without the calories.

Dear me, how I love a library.

For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante's Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that—from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare.

Her prose was a hammer; Darwin's was a psalm.

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;

Have you looked at my books? Glanced at my titles? Fondled my spines?

Books can be the people we never get to meet, ancestors or far neighbors.

He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.

you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

At first I thought I would study literature. Then, however, I realised I loved true stories even better than imaginary ones.

Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

but a library is a gorgeous language that you will never speak fluently.

I always carry the book of Holy Writ...and something to read...

Americans have many admirable characteristics, but literary taste is rare among them.

Poetry,' I continued, 'is too sensational for young minds.

To each other, they talked at a gallop. Literature turned them on; their ideas flowed, ran back and forth like a current. (The Cousins)

It never registered to them that I had time to read all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation. It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore. (The White Azalea)

Nor would I willingly miss the early darkness and the pleasant firelight tea and the long evenings among my books.