Quotes About Literature

Mervyn Peake

An anecdote in which Kant captures himself in pithy fashion: [Kant's] Famulus, a theologian who was unable to connect philosophy to theology, once asked Kant for advice as to what he should read on the subject. Kant: Read travel literature. Famulus: In dogmatic philosophy, there are things I do not understand. Kant: Read travel literature. Walter Benjamin, 'Unknown Anecdotes about Kant', GS

I'd have died without them [books]. Even now I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.

i do so hate finishing books. i would like to go on with them for years.

Beatrix Potter

Lady stand on line before me, speak English so good, like genius, in America only four years, I ashamed tell twenty-two years; I tell twenty!" To class she went only once. "I don't go back," she said emphatically. "Too foolish book, Dick and Jane." She shrugged disdainfully. "Not Tolstoi!

Bel Kaufman (1911–2014) was a writer, teacher, and lecturer best known for her classic, bestselling novel Up the Down Staircase (1965).

About Anna Faktorovich's Romances of George Sand: "What a read! Not lacking in action and very imaginative.

Reviewing the literature on love I noticed how few writers, male or female, talk about the impact of patriarchy, the way in which male domination of women and children stands in the ways of love.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

No woman has ever written enough.

No significant body of feminist writing addresses boys directly, letting them know how they can construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism. There is no body of feminist children's literature that can serve as an alternative to patriarchal perspectives, which abound in the world of children's books.

Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed.

It is particularly distressing that so many recent books on love continue to insist that definitions of love are unnecessary and meaningless. Or worse, the authors suggest love should mean something different to men than it does to women - that the sexes should respect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we do not share the same language. This type of literature is popular because it does not demand a change in fixed ways of thinking about gender roles, culture or love.

Women, more so than men, rush out to purchase this literature. We do so because collectively we are concerned about lovelessness.

is particularly distressing that so many recent books on love continue to insist that definitions of love are unnecessary and meaningless. Or worse, the authors suggest love should mean something different to men than it does to women—that the sexes should respect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we do not share the same language. This type of literature is popular because it does not demand a change in fixed ways of thinking about gender roles, culture, or love.

Hard SF is the literature of change, the genre that examines the implications—both beneficial and dangerous—of new sciences and technologies.

By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man; nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out. After an era of darkness, new races build others; but in the world of books are volumes that live on still as young and fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead. — Clarence Day

I do not mean to exclude books of history, poetry, or even fables from our schools. They may and should be read frequently by our young people, but if the Bible is made to give way to them altogether, I foresee that it will be read in a short time only in churches and in a few years will probably be found only in the offices of magistrates and in courts of justice. (1786)

Romane sind dazu da, verschlungen zu werden. Sie lesen ist eine Wollust der Einverleibung.

Read­ing is use­ful,' Pyrlig said.

BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Agincourt; the bestselling Saxon Tales, which include The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, and Sword Song; and the Richard Sharpe novels, among many others. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod. WWW.BERNARDCORNWELL.NET

The Reign of Edward III by W. Mark Ormrod; and Edward III by the same