Great Literature Quotes - Page 2

• Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

  Robert Benchley

  Spring, Writing, Soul

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• Just as the office worker dreams of murdering his hated boss and so is saved from really murdering him, so it is with the author; with his great dreams he helps his readers to survive, to avoid their worst intentions. And society, without realizing it respects and even exalts him, albeit with a kind of jealousy, fear and even repulsion, since few people want to discover the horrors that lurk in the depths of their souls. This is the highest mission of great literature, and there is no other.

  Ernesto Sabato

  Dream, Book, Office

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• I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.

  Kathy Reichs

  Writing, Character, People

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• Literature is the adventure. It's the story, it's the fight, it's people falling in love, it's people with deep personality disorders who succeed anyway beyond themselves. That's what great literature is.

  Walter Mosley

  Falling In Love, Adventure, Fighting

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.

  William Butler Yeats

  Pieces, Literature, Becoming

  William Butler Yeats (2017). “Ideas of Good and Evil”, p.79, Litres

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• There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Art, Philosophy

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• Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Freedom Of Speech, Guarantees, Literature

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

  P. D. James

  Years, Care, Might

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• Have no regrets. Every relationship leads you to where you're meant to be. Learn to be comfortable with being alone. Learn to be comfortable with saying no to people; we put everybody else before ourselves. Read great literature; don't get all your information from TV. Define your moral code - nobody else is going to give you that. Find it yourself. Keep asking questions, keep challenging. You don't have to conform. Rebellion creates character. And, as my mother always said to me, "Don't let anyone break your spirit!"

  Nicole Kidman

  Mother, Regret, Character

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• [Bob Dylan] is principally a recording artist, and if he weren't, it is unthinkable he would have had such an impact. He is to be heard first and read second. Well, what about plays, you could reasonably ask. Is [William] Shakespeare not great literature? Yes, obviously: but his work is great literature even to those who have never known it performed. The same is evidently not true of Dylan.

  David Bennun

  Artist, Impact, Play

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Leisure, itself the creation of wealth, is incessantly engaged in transmuting wealth into beauty by secreting the surplus energy which flowers in great architecture, great painting and great literature. Only in the atmosphere thus engendered floats that impalpable dust of ideas which is the real culture. A colony of ants or bees will never create a Parthenon.

  Edith Wharton

  Real, Flower, Dust

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• America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  America, Independence, Pieces

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• I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences.

  Harvey Pekar

  Thinking, Elements, Literature

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.

  Julie Walters

  People, Literature, Actresses

  "Still Walters" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. May 11, 2002.

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• The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

  Margaret Atwood

  Literature, Myth

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• The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Girl, Boys, Ideas

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• I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.

  John Berryman

  Bored, Literature, Resources

  John Berryman (2014). “77 Dream Songs: Poems”, p.16, Macmillan

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• 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.

  Francine Prose

  Thinking, Literature, Strange

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• No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.

  Avi Arad

  Real, Book, Reading

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• A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mind, Literature, Inquiring

  "Prejudices Second Series".

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• Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

  A. E. Housman

  Stupid, Personal Opinions, Perception

  A. E. Housman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of A. E. Housman (Illustrated)”, p.151, Delphi Classics

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• Great literature transcends its native land, but none that I know of ignores its soil.

  J. Frank Dobie

  Land, Literature, Soil

  J. Frank Dobie (2010). “Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest”, p.7, University of Texas Press

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• 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.

  Julia Quinn

  Would Be, Alive, Literature

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• A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.... No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Art, Mean, Greatness

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• Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Leadership, Literature, Moral

  Shirley Hazzard (2016). “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays”, p.67, Columbia University Press

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