A Quote by Charles Nodier

Literature is the expression of society.

Charles Nodier

Quote Topics

Expression Literature Society

Quote Author

Charles Nodier
French - Author
April 29, 1780 - January 27, 1844

Thai society rarely attempts to control literature in the same way that it vigilantly polices visual art. It's ironic because people in this society are more aware of literature than they are of art.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.

Elfriede Jelinek

The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind....Attitudes on campuses often presage tendencies in the larger society. If that is so with respect to freedom of expression, the erosion of principle we have seen throughout our society in recent years may be only the beginning.

Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature.

Cao Yu

There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society.

Irvine Welsh

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

Lionel Trilling

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise.

Leland Ryken

No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies.

Northrop Frye

South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison.

J. M. Coetzee

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

Alfred North Whitehead

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?

William Butler Yeats

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.

Gao Xingjian

In a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

Bat for Lashes

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What we lack is a basic willingness to see literature as providing some kind of necessary foundation. Our society still expects schools to prepare their charges for work only and not for life. As such, literature is construed as at best technically useless and random, at worst socially disruptive.

Gwee Li Sui

A Quote by Charles Nodier

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors