Literature Quotes

"This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant"

Virginia Woolf, Author

"That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems"

Georg Brandes, Critic

"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash"

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Novelist

"The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet

"The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money"

Samuel Butler, Poet

"Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself"

Samuel Butler, Poet

"When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences"

Frederick Sanger, Scientist

"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes"

Thornton Wilder, Writer

"The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature"

George P. Baker

"Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature"

Paul Valery, Poet

"The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature"

Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish"

Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer

"I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

"Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art"

William Ralph Inge, Clergyman

"A great speech is literature"

Peggy Noonan, Writer

"Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy"

Christopher Hitchens, Author

"Comics? Honestly, that's more a matter of nostalgia for me. I think most of that energy has gone to my love of literature and my love of film"

Jonathan Lethem, Writer

"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself"

Jim Rohn, Businessman

"Literature is analysis after the event"

Doris Lessing, Writer

"The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance"

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Novelist

"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature"

John Steinbeck, Author

"The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible"

Washington Irving, Writer

"There is only one school of literature - that of talent"

Vladimir Nabokov, Novelist

"Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man"

Vladimir Nabokov, Novelist

"And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read"

Albert Maltz, Author

"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history"

Octavio Paz, Poet

"I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side"

Manuel Puig, Author

"I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

"Tardiness in literature can make me nervous"

Manuel Puig, Author

"I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it"

Clifford Geertz, Scientist

"The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order"

Jean Cocteau, Director

"Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There's an objective and a subjective camera, like there's a third- and a first-person narrator in literature"

Manuel Puig, Author

"It's interesting to note that all revolutionary literature was written by pastors. These guys were involved in a revolution against the mightiest power that the world had ever seen"

Randall Terry, Celebrity

"And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s"

Thomas Keneally, Novelist

"Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance"

Clifford Geertz, Scientist

"I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things"

Clifford Geertz, Scientist

"If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays"

Ezra Pound, Poet

"A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations"

Ezra Pound, Poet

"A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug"

George Borrow, Author

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