Quotes About Literature

Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone.

Each of them is a book through which other books dream. (referring to Nodier's SMARRA and TRILBY)

He had a love of books, for in books was recorded the knowledge of all those who had gone before him.

where there are books, there will always be haters of books alongside the lovers of them.

Books are constantly changing the world. If you're a Christian, you have been changed by the Bible, by the word of God, or what was left of it when it was finally wrung through the hands of men. If you are a Muslim, look to the Koran; if a Communist, to Marx and Engels. Don't you see? This world is constantly being altered by books.

I don't think you can dial 911 for a literary emergency.

These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside.

I was a child who loved books, and I am an adult who is the product of books.

There were books everywhere: on the floors, on the stairs, on furniture both built for that purpose and constructed for other ends entirely. There were bookshelves in the main hallway, in the downstairs rooms, and in the upstairs rooms. There were even bookshelves in the bathroom and the kitchen.

It's a natural consequence of the capacity of a bookstore or library to contain entire worlds, whole universes, and all contained between the covers of books. In that sense, every library or bookstore is practically infinite. This library takes that to its logical conclusion.

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

Life is short and the number of books is appalling.

The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world, sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise when it is luckily possible.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

All measure, and all language, I should pass, Should I tell what a miracle she was.

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

[Of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:] Here is God's plenty.

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

When the series outlived original material, she created new stories, but used some character or incident in the canon as her jump-off point. So successful was she at capturing the color of the written word that she drew warm praise from Conan Doyle's widow and son. Denis Conan Doyle, watching from the sponsor's booth as Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce became his father's characters in a 1941 radio play, pronounced it "admirable, absolutely admirable.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.

Life is too short to read inferior books.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.