Quotes About Literature

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that, if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books, and what joy can be greater?

There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

You talk books away, he said; why don't you write one? I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.

Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.  More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason why I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.

Non vi sono libri morali o libri immorali. Vi sono libri scritti bene e libri scritti male, e nient'altro.

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.

Cecily: Oh, yes. Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I? CECILY: Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action.

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public.  Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

Who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes

An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.  Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! Jack.  That wouldn't be at all a bad thing. Algernon.  Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow.  Don't try it.  You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University.  They do it so well in the daily papers. 

it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. 

Meredith is a prose Browning. So is Browning.

We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.