Literature Quotes - Page 15

• Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure.

  T. E. Brown

  Mirrors, Giving, Calling

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• According to the United Nations' latest count, of the approximately 3,000 languages spoken in the world today, only some 78 have a literature. Of those 78, a scant five or six enjoy a truly international audience.

  Barry Sanders

  World, Today, Six

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• The reading public is intellectually adolescent at best, and it is obvious that what is called ''significant literature'' will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics and automobiles.

  Raymond Chandler

  Reading, Society, Significant

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.65, Grove Press

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• The story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-"The sky is falling," cried Henny-Penny, "and a piece of it fell on my tail.

  John Steinbeck

  Fall, Sky, Tails

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• A multitude of books distracts the mind.

  Socrates

  Book, Reading, Mind

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• The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Trying, Criminals, Problem

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• The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Feelings, Levels, Firsts

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• The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Art, Doubt, Stories

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• There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Hero, Eye, People

  FaceBook post by Naguib Mahfouz from Dec 20, 2010

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• Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Winning, Lifestyle, Used

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• I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Order, Political, Suffering

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• The Constitution is more than literature, but as literature, it is primarily a work of the imagination. It imagined a country: fantastic. More fantastic still, it imagined a country full of people imagining themselves.

  Roger Rosenblatt

  Country, People, Imagination

  Roger Rosenblatt (1994). “The Man in the Water: Essays and Stories”, Random House

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• In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

  Lytton Strachey

  Triumph, Peculiar, Century

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.77, Delphi Classics

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• Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Remember, English Literature

  "Henry Louis Gates Uncovers 'Faces Of America'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. February 17, 2010.

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• You are no better than you should be.

  Francis Beaumont

  Should, Garters, Miscellaneous

  Francis Beaumont (1718). “The Coxcomb. A Comedy, Etc”, p.39

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• Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

  Philip Roth

  Inspire, Audacity, Belief

  Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992). “Conversations with Philip Roth”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• Good writing is almost the concomitant of good history. Literature and history were joined long since by the powers which shaped the human brain; we cannot put them asunder.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Writing, Long, Brain

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• There is a vast difference between how things seem from the outside and how they feel on the inside.

  Nigella Lawson

  Differences, Feels, Seems

  "Nigella Lawson: Who'd be a goddess?" by Sally Vincent, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2004.

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• People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  People, Legs, Lasts

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• This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  World, Humane, Inhuman

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• Who sows fear, reaps weapons.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Weapons, Reap

  "About Tolerance" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, 1977.

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• There must always be some pretentiousness about literature, or else no one would take its pains or endure its disappointments.

  Glenway Wescott

  Pain, Disappointment, Endure

  Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Thomas Wolfe (1945). “The Crack-up”

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• The primary object of a student of literature is to be delighted. His duty is to enjoy himself, his efforts should be directed to developing his faculty of appreciation.

  Lord David Cecil

  Appreciation, Effort, Students

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• The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

  Harold Pinter

  World, Systematic, Crime

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

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• I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

  Harold Pinter

  Speak, Ought

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