
„The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.“
— Amos Oz Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual 1939 - 2018
A collection of quotes on the topic of literature, can, art, other.
„The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.“
— Amos Oz Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual 1939 - 2018
„Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116
„Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.“
— Cassandra Clare, book Clockwork Angel
Source: Clockwork Angel
„You know who critics are?— the men who have failed in literature and art.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 35. Compare: "Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics", Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811–1812; "Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic", Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragments of Adonais.
„Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.“
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer, book Bumi Manusia
Source: Bumi Manusia
„Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.“
— Vladimir Nabokov Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor 1899 - 1977
„Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.“
— Witold Gombrowicz Polish writer 1904 - 1969
„All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.“
— Franz Kafka author 1883 - 1924
Total 1144 quotes literature, filter:
— Eleanor Roosevelt American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States 1884 - 1962
— Arundhati Roy Indian novelist, essayist 1961
Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk
— Charles-Augustin de Coulomb French physicist 1736 - 1806
as quoted by [C. Stewart Gillmor, Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-century France, Princeton University Press, 1971, 069108095X, 255-261]
— Andrea Dworkin Feminist writer 1946 - 2005
Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).
— John Galt (novelist) British writer 1779 - 1839
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, manuscript note written in his copy of The Provost; cited from Thomas Middleton Raysor (ed.) Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 344.
Criticism
— E.M. Forster English novelist 1879 - 1970
"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
— Flannery O’Connor American novelist, short story writer 1925 - 1964
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
— Lynn Margulis American evolutionary biologist 1938 - 2011
Source: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species
„Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.“
— André Breton French writer 1896 - 1966
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)
Context: After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that lead to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.
— Richard Dawkins English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
— Shiing-Shen Chern mathematician (1911–2004), born in China and later acquiring U.S. citizenship; made fundamental contributions to differ… 1911 - 2004
[1991, Surface Theory with Darboux and Bianchi, Miscellanea Mathematica, 59–69, Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76709-8_4]
— Sita Ram Goel Indian activist 1921 - 2003
Defence of Hindu Society (1983)
— Alice A. Bailey esoteric, theosophist, writer 1880 - 1949
Source: Education in the New Age (1954), p.46
— James Burke (science historian) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer 1936
Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
— Michael J. Behe American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate 1952
Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. (1996).
— George Steiner American writer 1929 - 2020
Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 4 (p. 11).
— Nicholas Murray Butler American philosopher, diplomat, and educator 1862 - 1947
Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)
— Michel Danino Indian writer 1956
On Sri Aurobindo, as quoted in " The Sarasvati was more sacred than Ganga http://www.rediff.com/news/report/interview-with-michel-danino/20100522.htm", Rediff (22 May 2010)
— Northrop Frye Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912 - 1991
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School
— Jadunath Sarkar Indian historian 1870 - 1958
Sir Jadunath Sarkar Shivaji and His Times, 1919, p. 406
— Mortimer J. Adler American philosopher and educator 1902 - 2001
Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 316
— Max Scheler German philosopher 1874 - 1928
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92
— G. K. Chesterton, book All Things Considered
"The Case for the Ephemeral"
All Things Considered (1908)
Context: I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, book The World as Will and Representation
preface of his The World as Will and Representation., quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)
„All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.“
— Leo Tolstoy Russian writer 1828 - 1910
— Roger Ebert American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter 1942 - 2013
Source: I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie
„Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.“
— Charlotte Perkins Gilman American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer 1860 - 1935
Source: The Man-Made World
„He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it“
— Joseph Heller, book Catch-22
Source: Catch-22
„Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.“
— Stephen Fry English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist 1957
— Susan Sontag American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933 - 2004
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.
Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.
„It is quite possible for a work of literature to operate as a war machine upon its epoch.“
— Monique Wittig French writer 1935 - 2003
„The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.“
— Margaret Atwood Canadian writer 1939
„Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.“
— Roland Barthes French philosopher, critic and literary theorist 1915 - 1980
— Renata Adler American author, journalist and film critic 1938
Source: Speedboat
— John Cheever American novelist and short story writer 1912 - 1982
Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).
„Painting taught literature to describe.“
— Orhan Pamuk Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient 1952
— Northrop Frye Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912 - 1991
Source: The Educated Imagination
„Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.“
— Raymond Chandler Novelist, screenwriter 1888 - 1959
„Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature“
— Anita Brookner, A Start in Life
Source: A Start in Life
„If you're going to binge, literature is definitely the way to do it.“
— Oprah Winfrey American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist 1954
— Anaïs Nin writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903 - 1977
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
„Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.“
— Oscar Wilde Irish writer and poet 1854 - 1900
— Romain Gary French writer and diplomat 1914 - 1980
„The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.“
— Gustave Flaubert French writer (1821–1880) 1821 - 1880
„Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it.“
— Philip Roth American novelist 1933 - 2018
„The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.“
— T.S. Eliot 20th century English author 1888 - 1965
„She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.“
— Michael Cunningham, book The Hours
Source: The Hours
„This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.“
— Julian Barnes, book The Sense of an Ending
Source: The Sense of an Ending
— Stephen R. Covey, book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
— Glen Duncan British writer 1965
Source: Talulla Rising
— Samuel Butler, book The Way of All Flesh
Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14
Context: Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.
— Jorge Luis Borges, book Other Inquisitions
"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"
Variant translation: A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time — this one, for instance — as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.
Other Inquisitions (1952)
„The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.“
— Jean Cocteau French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker 1889 - 1963
Source: Le Potomak : Précédé d'un Prospectus 1916
— Jonathan Safran Foer, book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
„While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.“
— Cyril Connolly British author 1903 - 1974
Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus
— Mortimer J. Adler American philosopher and educator 1902 - 2001
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
— Nathanael West American writer 1903 - 1940
Source: Miss Lonelyhearts and A Cool Million