Quotes About Literature

In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.

Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.

Books are the building blocks of civilization and a people without books are a people without history, a people with no story older than the tales of the oldest man or woman.

Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side

I feel like women very often do write differently than men, but women write things that men can't write.

Theories by women about women have only recently begun to appear in print. Theories by men about women are abundant.

Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself.

Keepers of books, keepers of print and paper on the shelves, librarians are keepers also of the records of the human spiritthe records of men's watch upon the world and on themselves.

I read The Stinky Cheese Man as an adult. I missed that book when I was a kid. I grew up mostly with books bought at yard sales, picture books from the fifties to 1975, which is really a lucky thing.

A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

God! How men of letters are stupid.

All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity.

More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.

...a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.

Of all the things that men may heed 'Tis most of love they sing indeed.

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.

Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.

Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.

The language of my books has shaped me as a man.

You can tell a man's taste in literature by his judgment in knowing what not to read.

Books-bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.

...the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man.

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.