Literature Quotes - Page 14

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.

  Tibor Fischer

  Events, Half, Arguing

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• It's true, some senior Hungarian writers are not known for their laughter. There is a strong Germanic influence - an attitude that if it's enjoyable it can't possibly be literature.

  Tibor Fischer

  Senior, Strong, Laughter

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• I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

  Diane Wakoski

  Voice, Narrative, Shakespeare's Sonnets

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• Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Art, Real, Morality

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• People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Mirrors, Self, People

  Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). “Afterthoughts”

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• O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking breast.

  William Shakespeare

  Book, Reading, Dumb

  Sonnet 23

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• Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

  George Orwell

  Reality, Progress, Slavery

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.250, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don't write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Sex, Writing, Kids

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• Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.

  John Dryden

  Slave

  'The Hind and the Panther' (1687) pt. 2, l. 285

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• Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

  Herman Melville

  Work, Grief, Men

  Herman Melville (2012). “Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)”, p.153, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Book, Reading, Editors

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.201, Oxford University Press

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• Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

  David Brin

  People, Age, Doe

  Orbit Interview, www.sffworld.com. July 19, 2002.

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• True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

  Alexander Pope

  Self, Easy, Courtesy

  "Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men". Book by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 451, 1887.

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• Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.

  Mason Cooley

  Elude Us, Elude, Eternity

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• No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Thinking, Vanity

  'The Bertrams' (1859) ch. 27

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• The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.

  Mason Cooley

  Shade, Respectability

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