Quotes About Literature

Donc, il fut résolu que l'on empêcherait Emma de lire des romans. L'entreprise ne semblait point facile. La bonne dame s'en chargea : elle devait quand elle passerait par Rouen, aller en personne chez le loueur de livres et lui représenter qu'Emma cessait ses abonnements. N'aurait-on pas le droit d'avertir la police, si le libraire persistait quand même dans son métier d'empoisonneur?

En resumen, la primera injusticia ha sido practicada por la Literatura, que no se preocupa por la Estética, la cual no es más que una justicia superior.

In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had loved the church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions...

Il fait une clientèle d'enfer ; l'autorité le ménage et l'opinion publique le protège. Il vient de recevoir la croix d'honneur.

Classiques (les). On est censé les connaître.

Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.

The smile floating on her lips. She's bored as well. She feels a bit guilty since she should feel great, there with all her family—but she suppresses a yawn. She'd rather be elsewhere. She's no longer used to long meals. She never liked them, by the way. I realize that I'm trying to invent a life for her. That's the problem with literature. One narrates. One embroiders. One adds material.

Ce que Flaubert avait fait pour les religions et les philosophies antiques dans la Tentation de Saint Antoine, il l'a de nouveau accompli pour tous les savoirs modernes.

Les vraies femmes de lettres sont des phénomènes. Leur rareté fait leur prix.

Existen distintas clases de libros. Muchos hay que ni siquiera se los abre; y pocos que se copian en los muros.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

my longing was for Russia...Not Soviet Russia. But nineteenth-century Russia, the Russia of Dostoevsky's saintly prostitutes and Alyosha; of Tolstoy's Pierre; and Aksionov, the sufferer in God Sees the Truth But Waits. A country where the characters in books were allowed to ask one another the questions: How must I live to be happy? What is goodness? Why does man suffer? What is to be done?

They teach us that in school, matters of principle. I swear it's a plot to get us all slaughtered the day they graduate us out the door. It's their revenge, see? Here we are reading books in literature class about some banana who's only got one oar in the water to start with, and then he pops it out worrying about principles.

Character in decay is the theme of the great bulk of superior fiction.

In books there were limitless worlds, there was truth, sometimes brutal and ugly, and sometimes happy and soothing.

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

I can't recall a single masculine figure created by a woman who is not, at bottom, a booby.

Last week, for the first time, I read Herman Melville's ''Moby Dick.'' It really amazed me by its badness.

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany pieces' —but alas— where are any Lovecraft pieces?

I sometimes write stories. I sometimes read them. Thank you. Stories in general—not yours.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a favourite scene.