Top 1200 Great Literature Quotes & Sayings - Page 6

The great universal literature has always had a tragic relation with freedom. The Greeks renounced absolute freedom and imposed order on chaotic mythology, like a tyrant.

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.

By the age of nine, I had a thorough knowledge of contemporary Polish literature as well as of foreign literature in Polish translation, and I began to write poems in honour of a lady of thirty years. Naturally, she knew nothing about them.

I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

I believe that prizes are useful things for the disciplines, whether we are talking about chemistry or we're talking... It motivates, it, you know, inspires, it encourages and it brings, in the case of literature, it brings literature, the arts out of the ghetto.

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work

With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularly. In fact, I know I failed. In reaching further than I could, I may not have produced a life- or literature-changing book, but I did produce one I am proud of.

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.

I have an English literature degree. I wanted to be the next great American novelist from a very early age, but I put it aside for a while, because I got very realistic at one point.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

The amplification of our diverse literary voices is a political act of resistance. Our lives are important, too. Our lives should be represented in our literature. And that literature is vital, compelling, and accessible. That literature deserves to be disseminated and noticed and available. And with respect to the dissemination and promotion of diverse voices - librarians, educators, and editors of literary journals play such an important role. They deserve not only a hearty shout out, but also our thanks and support.

When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

Intellectuals of [Albert] Camus' age who had previously disliked him now appreciate him. And at that point we come back to literature, and it's agreed that he was always a great writer.

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.

My life has had a lot of fits and starts: before I studied literature at all I was a musician, and began undergrad as a conservatory student. I started studying literature in my third year of college, when I took a poetry course with James Longenbach that was pretty extraordinary. It changed my life.

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience.

When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly ­surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.

Very often I hear talk about female literature, or femininity in literature. It's a categorization I am not sure about. Maybe there are a few elements that distinguish women's observations from men's, like the ability to notice some fine details.

Besides," he said breezily, "were it not for misunderstandings, we would be sadly lacking in great literature." She looked at him questioningly. "Where would Romeo and Juliet be?" "Alive.

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.

Chinatown is tremendously interesting... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.

I hope someday to see California literature become a part of mainstream American literature, and I hope to be part of that process.

When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that I was broadly exposed to nineteenth-century American literature. I became interested in the way that American writers used metaphoric language, starting with Emerson.

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.

And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.

There is an interview given by [ Jean-Paul] Sartre in the USA where he is asked what the future of French literature is, and he replies that the next great writer of the future is [Albert] Camus.

Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.

I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.

I think any good literature, whether it's for children or for adults, will appeal to everybody. As far as children's literature goes, adults should be able to read it and enjoy it as much as a child would.

Obviously, everything has always been defined by the dominant ideology. But the dominant ideology has been able to accept women's literature as well as men's literature. I would say that women have been hindered from creating for a variety of reasons, as Virginia Woolf so admirably explained in A Room of One's Own. When they have created, on the whole they have been recognized. In literature it hasn't been nearly as oppressive as in, say, painting, where even the existence of so many women painters has always been denied.

Historical fiction was not - and is not - meant to supplant literature from the period it describes. As a veteran of the Crimea, Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' to match his own internal sense of the truth of the Napoleonic wars, to dramatize what he felt literature from that period had failed to describe.

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

There can be no great literature in America until her writers have learned to trust her implicitly and love her devoutly.

Why should Cornishmen learn Cornish? There is no money in it, it serves no practical purpose, and the literature is scanty and of no great originality or value. The question is a fair one, the answer is simple. Because they are Cornish.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

While in some countries there's a feeling that literature must stay away from religion, this is not so in India - in the Indian way, literature is just another means to find a more spiritual life, to find our way to God.

The herbalist I met a few times - it was great - she gave me literature about the different processes that an herbalist would do to make medicines from certain herbs and things.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.

in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success.

Iliad by Homer is one of the great stories in literature. And I thought its themes really resonated today, whether that was my projection or Homer's intentions. It didn't seem like we had come very far.

For my part, I wish, with Mr. Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as any one to having these great works weakened or falsified.

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.

When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth.

What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.

By the age of nine I had a thorough knowledge of contemporary Polish literature as well as of foreign literature in Polish translation, and I began to write poems in honour of a lady of thirty years. Naturally, she knew nothing about them.

There is first the literature of KNOWLEDGE, and secondly, the literature of POWER. The function of the first is -- to teach; the function of the second is -- to move.

All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents.

We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.

Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side

Literature usually begets literature.

Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow - security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself.

In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.

I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them.

Not only do you need great lyrics, a great message, a great story, great vocals, great chords... you also need great instrumentation, great editing, great sonics, great mixing, and great mastering. It all comes together to make something truly great, and I think each element combines together to create a powerful impact on the consumer.

I regretted making a comment about Dave Eggers. I’ve never said anything about McSweeneys except that I admire what it is, and I think it’s great that they keep people interested in literature.