Quotes on Literature

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.

Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings.

Never mind, dear, we're all made the same, though some more than others.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second.

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.

The politician in my country seeks votes, affection and respect, in that order...With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.

We cannot make good news out of bad practice.

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.