Quotes About Literature

Aristotle was to verge from his mentor in the Poetics, recognizing the light both tragic drama and epic poetry shed on the human condition.

Poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements.

and Euripides, faulty though he may be in the general management of his subject, yet is felt to be the most tragic of the poets.

Uygarl??? tamamen yok etmek isteyenler anarÅŸistlerdir. Bütün kimyac?lar, profesörler, bilim ve edebiyat adamlar? anarÅŸisttir. Ama toplum onlar? cezaland?rmaz, çünkü adli düzen yok olmuÅŸtur. KiÅŸilere sald?r? bile art?k mümkün deÄŸildir çünkü her vatanda??n üstünde elektrikli korunma cihazlar? vard?r.

Don't change the subject while I'm quoting Tennyson.

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry.

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary.

Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in the evenings because they think that there is no alternative to idleness but the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste for literature. This is a great mistake.

I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.

Personally, I refuse to drive a car - I won't have anything to do with any kind of transportation in which I can't read.

I'm sure we would not have had men on the moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books

The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.

With no further clues, it might take the station Computer quite a while—perhaps as much as ten minutes—to locate the line in the whole body of English literature.

By the late 50s, the Big Three of science fiction were Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein.

Dear Mr Jinx: I'm afraid your idea is not at all original. Stories about writers whose work is always plagiarised even before they can complete it go back at least to H. G. Wells's 'The Anticipator'. About once a week I receive a manuscript beginning:

Undoubtedly, I am biased, but among these tales such masterpieces as 'The Star', 'The Crystal Egg', 'The Flowering of the Strange Orchid', and, above all, 'The Country of the Blind' blaze like diamonds amid costume jewellery.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.

He seems to have declared war on the King's English as well as on the English king.

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views. - Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done.

Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime.

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.