A Quote by Lytton Strachey

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.

Lytton Strachey

Quote Topics

Academy Dubious Either Evil Existence Extremely Far French French Literature Good How How Far Influenced Literature Question

Quote Author

Lytton Strachey
English - Critic
March 1, 1880 - January 21, 1932

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

T. S. Eliot

The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis.

William DeWitt Hyde

There are two evil futurities and one good. A miserable future existence is evil; and annihilation, or nigban, is an evil - a fearful evil. A happy future existence is alone good.

Adoniram Judson

...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

Dorothy Allison

There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness.

Philip Sidney

You pronounced your words as if you don’t acknowledge the shadows, or the evil either. Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?

Mikhail Bulgakov

The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

J. M. G. Le Clezio

If you were God’s children you would loathe the very thought of the world’s evil joys, and your question would not be, “How far may we be like the world?” but your one cry would be, “How far can we get away from the world? How much can we come out from it?

Charles Spurgeon

I think The Magicians takes these conventional ideas from this Christian literature of good vs. evil and it sort of shakes it up and asks a deeper, darker question about the nature of not just humanity in the face of good vs. evil, but the challenges of everyday life. And I think there's something incredibly timely about that and incredibly relatable to anyone who's growing up. Because we're all growing up. We're all constantly evolving.

Hale Appleman

Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our reality may seem degraded to posturing patriotism and self-righteous brutality, imaginative literature continues to question what heroism is, to examine the roots of power, and to offer moral alternatives. Imagination is the instrument of ethics. There are many metaphors besides battle, many choices besides war, and most ways of doing good do not, in fact, involve killing anybody. Fanstasy is good at thinking about those other ways.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves issues of existence.

Gao Xingjian

The so-called evils are evils only in relation to a certain thing, and that which is evil in relation to a certain existing thing, either includes the non-existence of that thing or the non-existence of some of its good conditions.

Maimonides

When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.