Quotes on Literature

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE.

It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.

Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.

They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.

Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?

In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

Throw away thy rod, throw away thy wrath; O my God, take the gentle path.

Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

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.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.