“Literature is always personal, always one
man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular
when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.”
― W.B. Yeats
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not
disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious
discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or
awkwardness.”
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
“The purpose of literature is to turn blood
into ink.”
T.S. Eliot
“All I am is literature, and I am not able
or willing to be anything else.”
Franz Kafka
“The one way of tolerating existence is to
lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”
Gustave Flaubert
“Literature adds to reality, it does not
simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life
requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our
lives have already become.”
C.S. Lewis
“In great literature, I become a thousand
different men but still remain myself.”
C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
“Literary experience heals the wound,
without undermining the privilege, of individuality.”
C.S. Lewis
Literature is where I go to explore the
highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I
hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination
and of the heart.
Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian
novelist.
The liveliness of literature lies in its
exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human
being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision
reflected.
Salman Rushdie (1948-?) Anglo-Indian
novelist.
All modern American literature comes from
one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from
that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) American
Writer.
“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached
ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
The man who does not read books has no
advantage over the man that can not read them.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) U.S. humorist,
writer, and lecturer.
“Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in
rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming
my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out,
and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales
going on in my head.”
Orhan Pamuk, The New Life
The best of a book is not the thought which
it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music
dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American
author and poet
“Until then I had thought each book spoke of
the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not
infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In
the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me.
It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible
dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of
powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many
minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their
conveyors.”
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
“I had found my religion: nothing seemed
more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words
“What is wonderful about great literature is
that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who
wrote.”
E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy
“That's why literature is so fascinating.
It's always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a
hundred different people. It's never the same thing twice.”
Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Third
president of the United States.
Of all the diversions of life, there is none
so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining
authors.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English
essayist, poet, and dramatist.
There is creative reading as well as
creative writing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet,
essayist and lecturer.
Reading makes a full man, meditation a
profound man, discourse a clear man.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American
statesman, scientist and philosopher.
Books are divided into two classes, the
books of the hour and the books of all time.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art
critic.
The books that the world calls immoral are
the books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet and
dramatist.
All good books are alike in that they are
truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one
you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you;
the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the
places and how the weather was.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) American
Writer.
A good novel tells us the truth about it's
hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
British journalist, novelist and poet.
To learn to read is to light a fire; every
syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French poet,
dramatist and novelist.
A book worth reading is worth buying.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art
critic.
Read, read, read. Read everything - trash,
classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works
as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If
it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) American
novelist and short-story writer.
Books, like friends, should be few and well
chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like
true friends, they will never fail us, never cease to instruct, never cloy.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) British
clergyman, sportsman and author.
Be a little careful about your library. Do
you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real
question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that
will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out
or outside in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet,
essayist and lecturer.
A room without books is like a body without
a soul.
Marcus Tulius Cicero (106-43 BC) Writer,
politician and great roman orator.
When the book comes out it may hurt you --
but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about
yourself as much as I can face about myself.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) African-American
writer.
'Tis the good reader that makes the good
book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides
hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is
according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion
sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet,
essayist and lecturer.
Books are not made for furniture, but there
is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American
politician.
When you reread a classic, you do not see
more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was
before.
Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999) American
editor and writer.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the
reader.
Robert Frost (1875-1963) American Poet.
Reading is equivalent to thinking with
someone else's head instead of with one's own.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German
philosopher.
There are people who read too much:
bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are
drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and
stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) American
journalist, satirist and social critic.
All the known world, excepting only savage
nations, is governed by books.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer and
historian.
Read the best books first, or you may not
have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American
naturalist, poet and philosopher.
Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French
novelist.
Without books the development of
civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change,
windows on the world, ''Lighthouses'' as the poet said ''erected in the sea of
time.'' They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of
the mind, Books are humanity in print.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German
philosopher.
You should read books like you take
medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art
critic.
To use books rightly, is to go to them for
help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by
them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from
them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our
solitary and unstable opinions.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art
critic.
Much reading is an oppression of the mind,
and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless
scholars in the world.
William Penn (1644-1718) British religious
leader.
To feel most beautifully alive means to be
reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language
the sudden flash of poetry.
Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) French
philosopher and poet.
The reading or non-reading a book will never
keep down a single petticoat.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) British poet.
Some books are to be tasted; others to be
swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) British
statesman and philosopher.
In science read the newest works, in
literature read the oldest.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
British politician, poet and critic.
Never read any book that is not a year old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet,
essayist and lecturer.
Next to acquiring good friends, the best
acquisition is that of good books.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) British
clergyman, sportsman and author.
We are too civil to books. For a few golden
sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred
pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. poet,
essayist and lecturer.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) British
statesman.
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