Quotes on Literature

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.

Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.