Quotes About Literature

I measure my life out in books." "You should be measuring your life by living. Correction: you shouldn't be measuring your life. What's the point?

Mrs. Browning's death was rather a relief to me, I must say; no more Aurora Leighs, thank God!

Edward George Bulwer Lytton

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

My early and invincible love of reading--I would not exchange for the treasures of India.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

Cicero said that even if his lifetime were to be doubled he would still not have time to waste on reading the lyric poets.

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!Who has written such volumes of stuff!Some think him ill-tempered and queer,But a few think him pleasant enough.

How pleasant to know Mr Lear!" / Who has written such volumes of stuff! / Some think him ill-tempered and queer / But a few think him pleasant enough.

What counts in science is the importance of the discovery. What matters in literature is the originality and power of the metaphor.

I am now convinced that it is better to work from science into literature than to try the reverse, though many have done so with distinction. To understand the scientific culture deeply and, even more, to express the emotions that attend scientific exploration require that the writer inhabit science for a substantial part of his life, intent upon making important discoveries and placing them within the canon.

The wonderful thing about writers like [James] Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away.

People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.

This work is part of what is now a huge literature on the often harmful effects of rumination and explicit analysis on people's ability to experience and identify pleasure.

Otto's racial theories. These boiled down to the unquestionable fact that the German race had produced the greatest geniuses in art, music, and literature. As a member of that race, Otto found it insufferable that he was now forced to deal with, as he saw it, his inferiors, a bunch of illiterate, lecherous Jews who cared only about money.

It is characteristic of all extension systems to be treated as distinct and separate from the user and to take on an identity of their own. Religions, philosophies, literature, and art illustrate this. After a time, the extended system accretes to itself a past and a history as well as a body of knowledge and skills that can be learned. Such systems can be studied and appreciated as entities in themselves.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness.

Reading is an art form, and every man can be an artist.

He fed his spirit with the bread of books

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

After writing and before publishing a book, the writer should read it as a reader since such insight mirrors the flaws.

Before becoming a notable writer, one studies and reads the classic and academic writings to qualify such a level of notability and authenticity.