1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)
“The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.”
“Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul.”
Hays translation
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
V, 16
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V
“In Western thought, the body holds the soul; in Indian thought, the soul holds the body.”
On Hinduism (2000)
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (10 December 1994) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1994/oe-speech.html
Context: The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe. I fervently hope that my pursuit, as a Japanese, of literature and culture will, in some small measure, repay Western Europe for the light it has shed upon the human condition.
“While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”
Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus
“I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing”
