Literature Quotes - Page 34

• The state of minds vary according to the angle under which one examines them.

  Ella Maillart

  Mind, States, Angle

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• When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes.

  Ella Maillart

  Heart, Language, Speak

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• Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.

  Northrop Frye

  Mythology, Humans, Human Society

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.229, Dundurn

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• The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy - rather like a long-term marriage.

  Will Self

  Art, Long, Curious

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• Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.

  Abraham Verghese

  Beautiful, Imagination, Alive

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• Literature is the daughter of heaven, who descended upon earth to soften and charm all human ills.

  Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

  Daughter, Heaven, Earth

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• The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

  Ethel Smyth

  Clouds, Indulge In, Personality

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Jobs, Book

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• Smell is a word, perfume is literature.

  Jean-Claude Ellena

  Smell, Perfume

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• Russian literature saved my soul.  When I was a young girl in school and I asked what is good and what is evil, no one in that corrupt system could show me.

  Irina Ratushinskaya

  Girl, School, Evil

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• The hard-drinking newspaperman is, or used to be, a stock character of fiction. Now he is being phased out of literature just as he is being phased out of life.

  Waverley Root

  Drinking, Character, Fiction

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• We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Country, People, Political

  Speech in Seanad on government measure outlawing divorce, 11 June 1925

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• When tempest tossed, embrace chaos

  Dean Koontz

  Chaos, Tempest, Embrace

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• Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.

  Walt Whitman

  Art, Men, Thinking

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892: Speciman Days”, p.225, NYU Press

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• I've been an avid consumer of young adult literature since I was one, and I think some people leave that stuff behind when they become old adults, but I never did. I was always interested in the fantasy world created in those novels.

  Diablo Cody

  Thinking, Avid, People

  "Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Screenwriter Diablo Cody YOUNG ADULT Interview". collider.com. December 6, 2011.

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• Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

  Hermann Hesse

  Self, Excellence, Doe

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• When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

  Heinrich Heine

  Hero, Clown, Stage

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• We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.

  Bob Schieffer

  Jobs, People, News

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• How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Blood, Justice, Praying

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• Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

  Rebecca West

  People, Doe, Salt

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• Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

  Hesiod

  Men, Cities, Evil

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• When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.

  Anton Chekhov

  Real, Glasses, Drunk

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• Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.

  Jim Harrison

  Writing, Problem, Gender

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• The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

  Susan Sontag

  Jobs, Lying, Voice

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.193, Macmillan

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• Literature has nothing to do with usefulness; the most useful place in any house is the toilet.

  Theophile Gautier

  Writing, House, Toilets

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