Modern Literature Quotes

• All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Book, Usa, Literature

  Green Hills of Africa ch. 1 (1935)

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Inspirational, Positive

  The Importance of Being Earnest act 1 (1895)

  92 Copy quote

  Show source

• This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind versus intuition. The split between the conscious mind and the unconscious. There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our hearts, or intuition, another.

  Robert E. Ornstein

  Passion, Heart, Intuition

  6 Copy quote

• Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

  Susan Sontag

  Literature, Muse, Modern

  1966 Against Interpretation,'Camus' Notebooks'.

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

  William Dean Howells

  War, Degrees, Doe

  William Dean Howells (1969). “The Friendly Fire”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

  Helen Vendler

  Literature, Glory, Modern

  4 Copy quote

• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

  Oscar Wilde

  Truth, Lying, Simple

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.368, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern literature seduces with insults, riddles, and inside stories.

  Mason Cooley

  Stories, Literature, Insult

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

  Irving Howe

  Philosophy, Looks, Literature

  Irving Howe (1980). “Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentary”, Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization.

  F. L. Lucas

  Art, War, Tired

  F. L. Lucas (2015). “The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith”, p.21, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.

  Feist

  Happiness, Romantic Love, People

  "Feist: A Pop Star With A Punk-Rock Past". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. September 30, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.

  Harold Pinter

  Hate, Literature, Modern

  Harold Pinter (1979). “Betrayal”, p.116, Grove Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.

  Vladimir Putin

  Reading, Literature, Chekhov

  8 Copy quote

• The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

  Terry Pratchett

  Jobs, Thinking, Doctors

  7 Copy quote

• Roberto Calasso's survey of the renewed interest in myth demonstrates how decisive the gods' influence was on modern literature. Calasso is not only immensely learned; he is one of the most original thinkers and writers we have today.

  Charles Simic

  Today, Literature, Influence

  4 Copy quote