In literature, today, there are plenty of good masons but few good architects.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
The literature of a people must spring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn’t kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
—Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) English Theatre Director, Author
Of course, the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
—Francoise Sagan (1935–2004) French Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
That is a very good question. I don’t know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Nothing lives in literature but that which has in it the vitality of creative art; and it would be safe advice to the young to read nothing but what is old.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
The only privilege literature deserves—and this privilege it requires in order to exist—is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.
—Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian Revolutionary Leader
Never read any book that is not a year old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Literature has now become a game in which the booksellers are the kings; the critics, the knaves; the public, the pack; and the poor author, the mere table or thing played upon.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Literary dissipation is no less destructive of sympathy with the living world, than sensual dissipation. Mere intellect is as hard-hearted and as heart-hardening as mere sense; and the union of the two, when uncontrolled by the conscience and without the softening, purifying influences of the moral affections, is all that is requisite to produce the diabolical ideal of our nature.
—Anonymous