Quotes About Literature

I didn't want to die – not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.

If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away.

Because it's all about the rhythm, you said. Good sentences start with a beat.

I have my books and poetry to protect me

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

It was the best of Times New Roman, it was the worst of Times New Roman.)

One may say without exaggeration that Les Misérables triggered War and Peace.[23] Giants breed giants.

Nostalgia for old fictions is the strongest nostalgia of all.

Every wall was covered with shelves, packed tightly with books on every subject under the sun, and a few best unmentioned in polite company.

If you want to know the people around you," Stalin said, "find out what they read.

Mi pisci imamo neku tajnu koja nas održava u životu i daje nam nadu, mada znamo da to što pišemo nikad ne?emo mo?i da objavimo. Isak Babelj radi na ne?emu tajnom, Miša Bulgakov piše roman o ?avolu u Moskvi. Ali niko ih nikad ne?e ?itati. Niko ni mene ne?e ?itati.

It's certainly hard to find fault with a work that quotes Shakespeare, Homer, and a dirty limerick about "the young man from Oswego.

I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.

Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

The English language was spoken and written—but at the time of Shakespeare it was not defined, not fixed. It was like the air—it was taken for granted, the medium that enveloped and defined all Britons. But as to exactly what it was, what its components were—who knew?

Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays—they are all in this one book.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring, real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. "Imaginative literature," therefore, is either boring or immoral or a mixture of both.

Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead.

The only way to gain wisdom, is through loving books.

We are not born with wisdom, but we acquire it by reading books.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.