Quotes About Literature

CHAPTER LIII LADY USHANT AT BRAGTON

In the drawer of the old piece of furniture which stood just at the right hand of his own arm-chair there were various books hidden away, which he was sometimes ashamed to have seen by his clients, — poetry and novels and even fairy tales. For there was nothing Mr. Wharton could not read in his chambers, though there was nothing that he could read in his own house.

He always kept up his spirits, and was able in literary circles to show that he could hold his own. But he was driven by the stress of circumstances to take such good things as came in his way, and could hardly afford to be independent. It

CHAPTER LXXIX THE LAST DAYS OF MARY MASTERS

CHAPTER XLII MR. MAINWARING'S LITTLE DINNER

Anthony Trollope

He ain't got nothing to do," said the housemaid to the cook, "and as for reading, they say that some of the young ones can read all day sometimes, and all night too; but, bless you, when you're nigh eighty, reading don't go for much." The housemaid was right as to Mr. Harding's reading. He was not one who had read so much in his earlier days as to enable him to make reading go far with him now that he was near eighty

CHAPTER XIV THE DILLSBOROUGH FEUD

She did like reading, and especially the reading of poetry, — though even in this she was false and pretentious, skipping, pretending to have read, lying about books, and making up her market of literature for outside admiration at the easiest possible cost of trouble

Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

La filosofia sembra che si occupi solo della verità, ma forse dice solo fantasie, e la letteratura sembra che si occupi solo di fantasie, ma forse dice la verità.

Our mother had faith in literature the way others had faith in God or America; she put herself in its hands the way patients did their physicians; she prescribed it, she preached it.

You've read some of my stuff?" he asked eagerly, adding with bitterness, " 'The Raven,' I suppose. Such fame as I have appears to rest entirely on the plumage of that gloomy bird.

What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.

Homero, más que ningún otro, nos ha enseñado a todos el arte de forjar mentiras de manera adecuada

Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.

History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.

poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements

a poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses

Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. III

All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem.

The present work is, then, the masterpiece of one particular literary genre that flourished in the fourth century BC in Greece, that of the rhetorical manual, and it is a remarkable fact that it should have fallen to Aristotle to write it. It