Quotes on Literature

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

He is senseless who would match himself against a stronger man; for he is deprived of victory and adds suffering to disgrace.

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. 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 the Thing played upon.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.

Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto-God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

I wouldn't want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer - figuratively, anyway - if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world.

I think that literature is something that embraces a much larger experience than politics. It's an expression of what is life, of what are all the dimensions of life. But politics is one among others.