Literature Quotes

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Barbara Tuchman

History, Science, Thought

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
Henry Miller

Open, False, Street

Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. Forster

Reverence, Fatal

The Bible is literature, not dogma.
George Santayana

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
W. Somerset Maugham

Life, Single, Book

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Thomas Huxley

Money, Science, Books

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Family, Writing, Friends

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.
E. O. Wilson

Learning, Year, Known

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
Gore Vidal

Time, Made, Cannot

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

Life, War, Death

Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
Thomas Huxley

Science, Two, Sides

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Andre Maurois

Love, Others, Chosen

The crown of literature is poetry.
W. Somerset Maugham

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
George Saunders

Life, Good, Truth

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.
Christopher Hitchens

Mind, Soul, Since

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John Steinbeck

Writer, Nor, Hold

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Virginia Woolf

Men, Others, Reason

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.
Denis Diderot

Art, Science, Live

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Christopher Hitchens

Faith, Religion, Health

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
Washington Irving

Become, View, Land

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
Mason Cooley

Theory, Literary, Refer

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

Writing, Knew, Indeed

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.
Jose Saramago

Positive, Doubt, Until

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.
Walter Scott

History, Knowledge, May

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
E. B. White

Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!
David Herbert Lawrence

Art, Oh, Glorious

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov

Two, Known, Sweetest

I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
Julie Walters

Great, Understand, Why

Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.
David Herbert Lawrence

Deep, Curse, Toil

Gossip is more popular than literature.
Hugh Leonard

Gossip, Popular

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