Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil.
—Comte de Lautreamont (1846–1870) French Symbolist Poet
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian Dissident Novelist
The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible.
—Hugh Blair (1718–1800) Scottish Preacher, Scholar, Critic
A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.
—Christopher Hampton (b.1946) British Playwright, Screenwriter
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done.
—James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
The beaten paths of literature lead safeliest to the goal, and the talent pleases us most which submits to shine with new gracefulness through old forms.—Nor is the noblest and most peculiar mind too noble or peculiar for working by prescribed laws.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
A book worth reading is worth buying.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign—a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don’t want to hear the word mentioned.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
One must be an inventor to read well.—As the proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.”—There is creative reading as well as creative writing.—When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
The truth is that literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it to be. Response to it is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959) Australian Writer, Critic
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
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
A multitude of books distracts the mind.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
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
In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, a lack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?
—Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98) English Illustrator, Author
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
Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.
—Unknown
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Leave a Reply