Quotes About Literature

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

Poets have a license to lie.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spenser is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

Reading maketh a full man.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away.

The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great bestsellers.

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.

Television is the literature of the illiterate, the culture of the low-brow, the wealth of the poor, the privilege of the underprivileged, the exclusive club of the excluded masses.

The total absence of humour in the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.

Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?

Miguel de Cervantes

'twas bryllig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths out grabe.

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

A word after a word after a word is power.

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.