Quotes About Literature

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed to the best, But they've all read so much they know the tricks. How can we give then something fresh and new That's serious, but entertaining too?

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

Left to itself every literature will exhaust its vitality, if it is not refreshed by the interest and contributions of a foreign one. What naturalist does not take pleasure in the wonderful things that he sees produced by reflection in a mirror? Now what a mirror in the field of ideas and morals means, everyone has experienced in himself, and once his attention is aroused, he will understand how much of his education he owes to it.

Literature is ... a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

I've basically grown up with Harry Potter, as so many kids my age have. It's kind of a part of my life.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Literature may be light as a cobweb, but it must be fastened down to life at the four corners.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

Reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.

Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit

Life is rather above the measure of us all (save for a very few perhaps). We all need literature that is above our measure--though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time.

One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature.

I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.

Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.