Literature Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature the notion of infinity presents itself.

William Jones (philologist)

Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess above every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.

Narrow minds think nothing of importance but their own favorite pursuit, but liberal views exclude no branch of science or literature.

The simple point is that literature belongs to the world man constructs, not to the world he sees; to his home, not his environment.

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?

Science is probably unfavorable to the growth of literature because it does not throw man back upon himself and concentrate him as the old belief did; it takes him away from himself, away from human relations and emotions, and leads him on and on.

It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

Herman Melville

Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite.

In 1673 he wrote his great work De Algebra Tractatus; Historicus & Practicus, of which an English edition appeared in 1685. In this there is seen the first serious attempt in England to write on the history of mathematics, and the result shows a wide range of reading of classical literature of the science. This work is also noteworthy because it contains the first of an effort to represent the imaginary number graphically by the method now used. The effort stopped short of success but was an ingenious beginning.

David Eugene Smith

All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of women in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated.

Thomas Bulfinch

I could not live by literature if only to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character.

People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

Gary Saul Morson

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

Modern American literature was born in protest, born in rebellion, born out of the sense of loss and indirection which was imposed upon the new generations out of the realization that the old formal culture-the "New England idea"-could no longer serve.

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.

The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.

James Russell Lowell

Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.

Nadine Gordimer

Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets." Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed.

Mathematics to me is like a language I don't speak though I admire its literature in translation.

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.

V. S. Pritchett

Literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic.

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