Quotes About Literature

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.

There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better.

Christian sources, both literary and iconographic, do in fact draw parallels between Orpheus and Christ, just as Jewish art draws them between Orpheus and David. These, however, normally refer to the story of Orpheus as a musician whose playing could tame wild animals. Early Christian texts and images then adapted this theme to describe Christ as a "new Orpheus" who could tame human souls.

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story The Book-Bag.

Reread your favorite novel, the one you only let yourself read any more when you're sick in bed.

Every answer to every problem you have ever faced is in print. If you want to be a better lawyer, father, friend or lover, there are books out there that will rocket you to those goals. All the mistakes you will ever make in your life have already been made by those that have walked before you. Do you really think that the challenges you are facing are unique to you?

one of the best gifts my parents gave me was a love of learning, especially through books

I would never tell you not to read as many books as you can. But remember, some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole.

Also on my desk is a copy of Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, a truly priceless work, which was purchased by my dad for $1.95).

Every answer to every problem you have ever faced is in print.

remember, some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole. Which

My love of books was all that saved me.

Remember some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole.

Our minds are shaped by the books we read. Our characters, by the people we meet. Our spirits by the love we give.

the collective wisdom of humanity [is] enshrined in its poetry.

Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare. Sparks also said his novels are like Greek Tragedies. This may actually be true. I can't check it out because, tragically, no really bad Greek tragedies have survived.

My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its "self-help" section: "For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history, and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

In literature, it's called plagiarism. In the movies, it's homage.

And reading is a wonderful thing for the mind. I have not been many places in my life. But in books, I have traveled all over the world.

There's a real question as to what beauty is and why it's important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they're not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that's in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

Maybe a knowledge of literature and history was of no immediate benefit to a soldier in the ranks during the second world war; without it, however, it would have been impossible for Churchill to exert the kind of leadership that distinguished him, and which aroused even in the most uneducated the sense that far more was at stake than he could easily define.

In the German city-states there emerged thereafter a high culture, in which literature, philosophy, music, art and architecture were all spurred on by the rivalry of local sovereigns and the spread of Enlightenment ideas.

Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me.