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Quotations about Literature
The Literature of Man...
When Plato – was a Certainty –
And Sophocles – a Man –
When Sappho – was a living Girl –
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante – deified –
Facts Centuries before...
~Emily Dickinson, 1863
Literature is the echo of life. ~Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), paraphrase
I... was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. ~David Hume (1712–1776)
The Egyptians and Babylonians, ages before Moses, are speaking with us this day, face to face, heart to heart. We go back and walk with them in houses and cities that have been dust for millenniums of years. Is Shakespeare alive or dead? I neither know nor care. I have the madness of Lear and the fantasies of the "Midsummer Night's Dream." We tread the firmament of Milton's imagination. Plato and Aristotle order our thoughts. ~Rev. James H. Ecob, "The Call of the Universe," 1904
[L]iterature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers... ~Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, c.1836
Literature—our great archive of human expression... ~Sven Birkerts (b.1951), "Resisting the Kindle," The Atlantic, 2009 March 2nd
I am always pleased when I see literature made useful... ~Sophron (Samuel Johnson), The Rambler, No. LVII., 1750 October 2nd
The extent of a palace is measured from east to west, or from north to south; but that of a literary work, from the earth to heaven; so that there may be found as much range and power of mind in a few pages... as in a whole epic poem. ~Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1866
The power of persuasion is mighty, but perishable: its life, for the most part, passes with the life of the speaker. It darkens with his eye; it stiffens with his hand; it freezes with his tongue. The swords of these champions of eloquence are buried with them in the grave.... But in that speech, which is created by the printing-press into literature, dwells a principle never to be quenched. Literature is the immortality of speech. ~Robert Aris Willmott, "Glimpses of the Pageant of Literature," c.1844
A taste for literature is one of the most substantial sources of enjoyment with which the human race is acquainted.... In opulence or poverty, whether free to roam over the world or confined in a prison—still, if he has within his reach a few favorite authors, he can banish the troubles and trials of the present, and be happy within the world of mind. ~Charles Lanman, "Thoughts on Literature," 1840
Literature does not begin till emotion has begun. ~Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: How To Form It, 1908
Each man's memory is his private literature, and every recollection affects us with something of the penetrative force that belongs to the work of art. ~Aldous Huxley
To literature belongs the mighty privilege of embalming, for all ages, the departed kings of intellect. There they repose within the eternal pyramids of their fame. ~Robert Aris Willmott, "Glimpses of the Pageant of Literature," c.1844
There is a certain class of men in almost every community, who take pleasure in sneering at those who follow literature as a profession.... They look upon the man of letters as one prone to build airy castles, continually longing for pleasures which can never be realized, or as a mere day-dreamer. They think it would be better if all men were mechanics, or merchants, or farmers, and that man was made to plod through life with no higher aim than to satisfy his sensual desires! How foolish, how despicable are such ideas. ~Charles Lanman, "Thoughts on Literature," 1840
...her absent-minded father, who lived mainly in the past among the Greek poets... ~R. A. Dick (Josephine A. Campbell Leslie, 1898–1979), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1945
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature. ~Sarah Orne Jewett, letter to Willa Cather
He got up and began to shave. It was his custom while shaving to prop up before him a ten-cent copy of King Lear for memorization. His teacher at college had once remarked that King Lear was the greatest work in English literature, and the Encyclopædia Britannica seemed to be of the same opinion. Brush had read the play ten times without discovering a trace of talent in it, and was greatly worried about the matter. He persevered, however, and was engaged in committing the whole work to memory. ~Thornton Wilder, Heaven's My Destination, 1935
He who has not been "presented to the freedom" of literature has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. He is merely not born. He can't see; he can't hear; he can't feel in any full sense. He can only eat his dinner. ~Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)
To encourage Literature & the Arts, is a duty which every good Citizen owes to his Country... ~George Washington, 1784
No one with the slightest symptoms of education will deny that the Elizabethan age was the boss age for literature. We need name only Jonson and Marlowe and Sidney and Raleigh and Bacon to prove this assertion, keeping Shakespeare up our sleeve. Then followed the Puritans, and literature languished.
'Cause why? 'Cause those short-haired and short-sighted reformers strangled literature in its cradle. They held up an absurd moral standard of truthfulness, which had its natural effect upon the imaginations of little children.
Gone were the good old days of John Mandeville, when a man had but to visit a foreign land, and let his imagination run riot among the anthropophagi, the unicorns, the salamanders, sea serpents, and other chimeras of unnatural history, to the delight of all hearers.
But when traveler's tales ceased, and affidavits were demanded, lies were enfeebled, and literature — deprived of its normal pabulum — had to become realism. In other words, it died.
The handy Bartlett tells us Lord Byron said that a lie is "but the truth in masquerade" — and anybody (even a Puritan) who has seen how artists depict "Truth" will admit that the masking is demanded, and will welcome "truth by fairy fiction dressed."
So, if your little child lies skillfully, do not scold him, but buy him a typewriter and a fountain-pen. ~"Literature and Lies," LIFE, 1922 [Text a little altered. Though unnamed in the magazine, I suspect the author may be Arthur Guiterman.
I felt as indecisive as the feckless mob in The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth,
Shakespeare again. Once you let him into your head, he takes up tenancy and will not leave. ~Dean Koontz, Odd Hours, 2008
Yet literature as well as religion would lose half its force if it did not see men against the background of the universal doom. ~Robert Lynd, "The Old Game," Solomon in All His Glory, 1923
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the other people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. ~James Baldwin
The literary man mostly lives in company with the mighty spirits of the past, and the beings of his own mind. True, he studies the human heart in his daily walks, but the greater part of his knowledge is gathered from the past, and from thence his mind reaches forward into futurity, so that the field over which his soul may roam in search of wisdom is boundless as the universe. ~Charles Lanman, "Thoughts on Literature," 1840
...perhaps I'm a literary barbarian and am not yet educated up to the point of appreciating fine writing... ~Thomas Edison, diary, 1885
Experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions — such as prose and poetry; or imaginative, philosophic, historical; or elegiac, heroic, lyric; or religious and profane, etc., ad infinitum. But the greater truth is that literature is all one — and indivisible. The idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered in the head. All literature is the expression of feeling, of passion, of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life.... Even Johnson's Dictionary is packed with emotion. ~Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: How To Form It, 1908
I doubt if anything learnt at school is of more value than great literature learnt by heart. ~Richard Winn Livingstone (1880–1960), "On Education," 1945
[T]here are few mental exercises better than learning great poetry or prose by heart. ~"Mind Calisthenics," 1906
The object of literature is to make man a wiser and happier being. The poet makes us happy because he tells us how we may become so. ~Charles Lanman, "Thoughts on Literature," 1840
[L]iterature is the record of the best thoughts. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, address at the opening of the Concord Free Public Library
Literature, along with all other forms of fine art, is the product of the soul's effort to realize in consciousness its ideal and true self.... the experience the soul has with itself in striving for the realization of its own true worth.... Thus literature is life primarily, and not form. The form is only the manifestation of the life. ~Arnold Tompkins, "The Nature of Literature," c.1896
For me, literature is a form of play. But I've always added that there are two forms of play: football, for example, which is basically a game, and then games that are very profound and serious. When children play, though they're amusing themselves, they take it very seriously. It's important. It's just as serious for them now as love will be ten years from now. I remember when I was little and my parents used to say, "Okay, you've played enough, come take a bath now." I found that completely idiotic, because, for me, the bath was a silly matter. It had no importance whatsoever, while playing with my friends was something serious. Literature is like that—it's a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into. One can do everything for that game. ~Julio Cortázar (1914–1984), interview with Jason Weiss, "The Art of Fiction No. 83," The Paris Review, Fall 1984
Novels are the pastry and candy of literature. ~Austin O'Malley, Keystones of Thought
[L]iterature is only a part of the great whole—the soul's being—a single form of its development, and one among the thousand offices to which the versatile mind is called. ~Henry T. Tuckerman, "Characteristics of Lamb," in American Quarterly Review, March 1836
...on account of a misspent youth in which I learned a lot about literature... ~Gerald Raftery (1905–1986), "Horatius on Route 7," 1974
[He] crashed through the classics like a bull in a china-shop... ~Rupert Hughes, "Baby Talk," In a Little Town, 1917
The sermon is now the true poppy of literature. ~David Swing
Books talk to you for an afternoon.
Literature speaks for generations.
~Terri Guillemets
[L]earning... helps us to conquer our own infirmities... and without the assistance of literature, is a kind of death to the soul, and, in a manner the grave of a man alive. ~"General reflexions on the advantages of a good education," in The Scots Magazine, April 1749
Literature — Brain-fruit. ~Charles Searle, Look Here!, 1885
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. ~Samuel McChord Crothers
The test of best-sellerdom is readability. The test of literature is
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. ~Italo Calvino
Timeless literature keeps infinitely expanding, like the universe. ~Terri Guillemets
Classics are books that everybody talks about, and nobody reads. ~Author unknown, early 1900s
Oh! thou bright and blest Ideal...
And thy dove-eye'd, fair twin children,
Beauteous Literature and Art...
~William Pembroke Mulchinock
Literature lights the ages. ~Terri Guillemets
Katherine: "Richard Ill." Who's Richard Ill?
Bertram: Richard the Third.
Katherine: Oh.
~Ball of Fire, 1941, screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, from an original story by Thomas Monroe [Shakespeare jokes enhance any movie!
Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” has perhaps the most memorable opening line in all of Western literature: “I hope you motherfuckers like reading about whales” ~Ben, @pixelatedboat, tweet, 2018
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