Literature Quotes

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In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.

Henry David Thoreau

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.

The fig-leaves that hide the private parts of literature.

The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.

All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that.

For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Life is rather above the measure of us all (save for a very few perhaps). We all need literature that is above our measure—though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

I have had a "call" to literature, of a low order— i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit... seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of God's creatures.

After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature. Hence many universities came into existence, and at once so many learned men appeared that the authority of those who clung to barbarism soon declined.

Johannes Kepler

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

Simone de Beauvoir

The strangest thing in all this medieval literature is the conviction that if there is a word there must also be a clear meaning behind it, and the only problem is to find out that meaning.

Albert Einstein

If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?

Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.

What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

Henry David Thoreau

The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W. H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.

Henry David Thoreau

We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.

Henry David Thoreau

In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth.