Quotes on Literature

The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Persuasion is often more effectual than force.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?