Quotes About Literature

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.

He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 - 1762)

For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.

At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

The Russian people have had literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have fascinated the European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no such national and universally recognized figures as Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an interpreter. It

The poet or the story-teller who cannot give the reader a little ghostly pleasure at times never can be either a really great writer or a great thinker.

A book has to be easy to open and you don't have to be a bodybuilder to lift it. I like books I can read in bed. Those big tombstones would kill me.

but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books.

I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write.

Lazlo couldn't have belonged at the library more truly if he were a book himself.

I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful.

I'm a librarian," he said.

Here, captured between covers, was the history of the human imagination, and nothing had ever been more beautiful, or fearsome, or bizarre.

The books under the dust, they were stories. Folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends. They spanned the whole world. They went back centuries, and longer.

one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books.

And when he reread the stories, still it was research.

The keepers of books had been the keepers of wisdom.

Apenas se cuide. Os livros podem ser imortais, mas nós não somos.