Quotes About Literature

I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? - Reverend Finch's wife

In books we converse with the wise, as in action with fools. That is, if we know how to select our books. Some books are to be tasted, reads a famous passage, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.

but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales.

the Alexandrian Library was a tragedy of some moment, for it was believed to contain the complete published works of Æschylus, Sophocles, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, and a hundred others, who have come down to us in mangled form; full texts of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who survive only in snatches; and thousands of volumes of Greek, Egyptian, and Roman history, science, literature, and philosophy.

In books "we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." That is, if we know how to select our books. "Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested"; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.

It did not seem to Plato any insult to philosophy that it should be transformed into literature, realized as drama, and beautified with style; nor any derogation to its dignity that it should apply itself, even intelligibly, to living problems of morality and the state.

All forms of governments destroy themselves, by carrying their basic principles to excess. Democracies become too free in politics, in economics, in morals – even in literature and art, until at last even the dogs in our homes, rise up on their hind legs and demand their rights. Disorder grows to such a point that society will then abandon all its liberty to anyone who can restore order.

On his tombstone only three words were necessary:   HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

On his tombstone only three words were necessary: HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested";

A funny yet interesting read, Will Self knowa his stuff and must do a lot of deep research.

To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones.

Does a bibliophile ever have enough room on his shelves? The answer is obvious: get more shelves.

The Classics, it is the Classics! & not Goths nor Monks, that Desolate Europe with Wars.

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.

Like the button, the wheelbarrow, the spoon and the umbrella, the printed book is one of the truly great inventions of mankind - beautifully efficient and enduringly ideal. The place to acquire these wonderful objects is in a bookshop, where thousands upon thousands of varieties await you. There is no substitute for the real thing.

A list of the thirteen types of photograph (plus an afterthought): Aide-memoire Reportage Work of art Topography Erotica/Pornography Advertisement Abstract image Literature Text Autobiography Compositional Functional illustration Snapshot

There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.

those who belong properly to books, and to whom books, perhaps, do not quite so properly belong.

You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!

Dr Jaffery said that very few people in Delhi now wanted to study classical Persian, the language which, like French in Imperial Russia, had for centuries been the first tongue of every educated Delhi-wallah. 'No one has any interest in the classics today,' he said. 'If they read at all, they read trash from America. They have no idea what they are missing. The jackal thinks he has feasted on the buffalo when in fact he has just eaten the eyes, entrails and testicles rejected by the lion.

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

Those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them -- are ruinous!

All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.