Quotes About Literature

Ich verspräche gerne diesem Buche die Liebe der Deutschen.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

I am one thing, my writings are another.

Dostoevsky,the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.

The wittiest authors raise the very slightest of smiles.

The perfect woman indulges in literature just as she indulges in a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if anybody notices it — and to make sure that somebody does.

Books for the masses are always bad-smelling books: the odour of little people cling to them.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Even now it is ceasing to be art of the nobleman, and it is quite possible that some day one may find it so common and even vulgar that, along with all party literature and journalism, one would classify it as prostitution of the spirit.

Books for general reading always smell badly. The odor of common people hangs about them.

the Alexandrian man, who is basically a librarian and copy editor and goes miserably blind from the dust of books and printing errors.

Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93

Already even politics ceases to be the business of a gentleman ; and it is possible that one day it may be found to be so vulgar as to be brought, like all party literature and daily literature, under the rubric : Prostitution of the intellect.

I sometimes think that what civilized serenity the British people possess, and small but real ability to smile at themselves, is chiefly due to their good luck in having had William Shakespeare born one of their company.

Another evidence of this same disrespect for rational foundations is the general readiness of the modern mind to accept a statement because of the literary way in which it is couched, or because of the popularity of the one who says it, rather than for the reasons behind the statement.

from 1550 to 1650, a century that encompassed the careers of Shakespeare and other writers of gigantic stature, Calvin was England's most published author.

I can't think of any film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

La muerta del Creador implica finalmente la muerte del creador. Lo cual no impide que Michel Foucault y Jacques Derrida firmen como autores de sus libros...

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.

like Heidi, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables.

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.