LITERATURE QUOTES

quotations about literature

Literature quote

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

JEAN COCTEAU

attributed, Where Books Fall Open

Tags: Jean Cocteau


An interchange of literature is the conversation of nations.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


The history of literature is the history of the human mind.

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

"Chateaubriand's English Literature", Critical and Historical Essays


Literature is the garden of wisdom.

JAMES ELLIS

attributed, Day's Collacon


Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature

Tags: George Henry Lewes


Literature is a great staff, but a very sorry crutch.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Sir Walter Scott


Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do -- it can make us identify with situations and people far away. If it does that, it's a miracle.

CHINUA ACHEBE

The Altantic Online, Aug. 2, 2000

Tags: Chinua Achebe


Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.

ROBERTO BOLANO

2666

Tags: Roberto Bolano


We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

MICK FARREN

Darklost

Tags: Mick Farren


Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

FERNANDO PESSOA

The Book of Disquiet

Tags: Fernando Pessoa


Literature is the expression of the thoughts of society. Books are specimens of the conversations of an age, preserved in the spirit of taste and of genius.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY

attributed, Day's Collacon


There is a form of literature that is a deed, and a form that is only talk, and the latter passes away like a conversation.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

GAO XINGJIAN

"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium


The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

The Paris Review, winter-spring 1967


Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

speech, Feb. 6, 1990

Tags: Salman Rushdie


One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw", Other Inquisitions

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


All literature is but a word--a thought--a maxim amplified.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel


Literature: The art of putting old words into new places.

EDWARD BLANCHARD

Flights of Fancy


For me, the purpose of literature is to preserve the stories of that which disappears easily. That which is long-lasting, like the pharaohs and pyramids, doesn't need literature.

GEORGI GOSPODINOV

"Georgi Gospodinov: enter the world of the Bulgarian writer taking on empathy, sorrow and stereotypes", The Calvert Journal, August 13, 2018


While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

Tags: Cyril Connolly