Literature Quotes - Page 17

• Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.

  Anthony Trollope

  Screws, Peg

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.739, e-artnow

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• It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all that he is fit to do.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Self, Done

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “The Fixed Period”, p.9, Anthony Trollope

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• It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

  Anthony Trollope

  Art, Writing, Snakes

  Anthony Trollope (1871). “Ralph the heir. With illustr. by F.A. Fraser”, p.425

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• The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.

  Edith Hamilton

  Father, Mind, Generations

  Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

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• I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate.

  James Herbert

  Book, Thinking

  "From the archive: James Herbert on rats and redemption". Interview with Andrew Billen, www.theguardian.com. 1993.

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• Everything I write is designed to be milked to the last drop of revenue.

  Leslie Charteris

  Writing, Lasts, Revenue

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• [May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Spiritual, Art, Science

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• I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Moving, Science, Thinking

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• She [Chien-Shiung Wu] is a slave driver. She is the image of the militant woman so well known in Chinese literature as either empress or mother.

  Emilio G. Segre

  Mother, Science, Chinese

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• I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.

  Bob Woodward

  Believe, Thinking, Air

  "Watergate: 25 Years Later". The Washington Post Live Online discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. June 17, 1997.

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• Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

  William Styron

  Writing, Past, Judging

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

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• To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

  Gao Xingjian

  Lying, Writing, Quality

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• When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

  Anne Rice

  Writing, Enough, I Can

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• The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.

  E. M. Forster

  Writing, Mountain, Swamps

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• I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

  Richard Ford

  Reading, Beats, Extras

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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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• 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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• Half of the ills we hoard within our hearts
  Are ills because we hoard them.

  Bryan Procter

  Heart, Half, Heard

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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