Quotes on Literature

Literature is greater than any of us, dammit.

In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there.

Two urns on Jove's high throne have ever stood, the source of evil one, and one of good; from thence the cup of mortal man he fills, blessings to these, to those distributes ills; to most he mingles both.

How vain, without the merit, is the name.

Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.