Quotes About Literature

A book of genius is a book that can be read in a slightly or very different way by each generation. - The Enigma of Shakespeare

La segunda, que un famoso poeta es menos inventor que descubridor.

Alc?tuirea de c?rÅ£i vaste este o nes?buin?? obositoare ÅŸi aduc?toare de s?r?cie; s? întinzi pe cinci sute de pagini o idee a c?rei perfect? expunere oral? încape în cîteva cuvinte

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Quain solía argumentar que los lectores eran una especie ya extinta. «No hay europeo -razonaba-que no sea un escritor, en potencia o en acto.» Afirmaba también que de las diversas felicidades que puede ministrar la literatura, la más alta era la invención.

De El Sur, que es acaso mi mejor cuento, básteme prevenir que es posible leerlo como directa narración de hechos novelescos y también de otro modo.

A good sentence in English has a structure that begins with the second most important element, moves to the least important element, and ends with the strongest element. The pattern is 2-3-1.

Get hold of a copy of Heine's Buck der Lieder—that should be easily done—get hold of a German-English dictionary, and then begin to read. You may be puzzled at first, but after two or three months you will find yourself reading the finest poetry in the world and perhaps not understanding it but feeling it, which is far better, since poetry is not meant for reason but for the imagination.

Mi deplorable condición de argentino me impedirá incurrir en el ditirambo — género obligatorio en el Uruguay—, cuando el tema es un uruguayo.

Leer, por lo pronto, es una actividad posterior a la de escribir: más resignada, más civil, más intelectual

Altri si vantino dei libri che hanno scritto, io mi glorio di quelli che ho letto.

Cuando se acerca el fin, ya no quedan imágenes del recuerdo; sólo quedan palabras. No es extraño que el tiempo haya confundido las que alguna vez me representaron con las que fueron símbolos de la suerte de quien me acompañó tantos siglos. Yo he sido Homero; en breve seré Nadie, como Ulises; en breve seré todos: estaré muerto.

There are systems upon systems that are incredible but possessed of a pleasing architecture or a certain agreeable sensationalism. The metaphysicians of Tlön seek not truth, or even plausibility - they seek to amaze, astound. In their view, metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy. They know a system is naught but the subordination of all the aspects of the universe to one of those aspects - any one of them.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.

Lo repito: basta que un libro sea posible para que exista. Sólo está excluido lo imposible. Por ejemplo: ningún libro es también una escalera, aunque sin duda hay libros que discuten y niegan y demuestran esa posibilidad y otros cuya estructura corresponde a la de una escalera.

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary … More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. —Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, 10 November 1941

Nu conteaza sa citesti, ci sa recitesti.

I have always imagined that Heaven would be some kind of library.

Aku membayangkan bahwa surga itu merupakan sebuah perkampungan sederhana yang di tengahnya terdapat perpustakaan besar dan berisi buku-buku dari berbagai zaman dan bangsa.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn

It was the stuff of Alexandre Dumas' novels as it would be of George Sand's; Romanticism had some roots in reality.

There are far more a worst crimes than burning books.... Not reading them.

in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature¬Ã¢â'¬â€the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books—we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.