Quotes About Literature

The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.

In his earliest youth, he had drawn inspiration from really bad authors, as you may have seen from his style; as he grew older, he lost his taste for them, but the excellent authors just didn't fill him with the same enthusiasm

And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.

Era la enamorada de todas las novelas, la heroína de todos los dramas, la vaga ella de todos los libros de versos.

For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it.

Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto d'amare; ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere dal quell'amore non era venuta, e pensava che doveva essersi sbagliata. Ella cercava ora, di sapere che cosa volessero esattamente dire, nella vita, le parole felicità, passione ed ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate tanto belle, lette nei libri

Il citait du latin, tant il était exaspéré.

Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the upper ten that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.

What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.

No, read in order to live.

One ought to know everything, to write. All of us scribblers are monstrously ignorant. If only we weren't lacking in stamina, what a rich field of ideas and similes we could tap! Books that have been the source of entire literatures, like Homer and Rabelais, contain the sum of all the knowledge of their times. They knew everything, those fellows, and we know nothing.

Spiritul acesta, pozitiv în mijlocul exalt?rilor sale, care iubise biserica pentru florile ei, muzica pentru cuvintele romanÅ£elor, literatura pentru aÅ£â??rile ei pasionale, se r?zvr?tea în faÅ£a misterelor credinÅ£ei, dup? cum se îndârjea ÅŸi mai aprig împotriva disciplinei de nesuportat pentru firea ei.

Have you ever had the experience of finding in a book some vague idea that's already occurred to you, some obscure image that comes back to you from the depths of your mind, or a perfect expression of your most subtle feelings?

However, all this reading had disturbed their brains.

On peut juger de la bonté d'un livre à la vigueur des coups de poing qu'il vous a donnés et à la longueur de temps qu'on est ensuite à en revenir.

Read in order to live

Read in oreder to live

Elle se rappela les héroïnes des livres qu'elle avait lus, et la légion lyrique de ces femmes adultères se mit à chanter dans sa mémoire ...

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

Each of the arts has its own particular leprosy, its mortal ignominy that eats its face away. Painting has the family group, music the ballad, literature the criticism, and architecture the architect.

Le seul moyen de supporter l'existence, c'est de s'étourdir dans la littérature comme dans une orgie perpétuelle.

All that people have found fault with as exaggerated in fiction you have made me feel.