literature
26 results from the Oxford Quotations database - Perform another search
Page 1 of 2
next
1. Sinclair Lewis
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
Sinclair Lewis 1885-1951: The American Fear of Literature (Nobel Prize Address, 12 December 1930)
2. George Borrow
A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.
George Borrow 1803-81: Lavengro (1851)
3. Joseph Brodsky
There is no other antidote to the vulgarity of the human heart than doubt and good taste, which one finds fused in works of great literature.
Joseph Brodsky 1940-96: 'Letter to a President ' (1993), in On Grief and Reason (1996)
4. G. K. Chesterton
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G. K. Chesterton 1874-1936: The Defendant (1901) 'A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls'
5. William Empson
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
William Empson 1906-84: Milton's God (1981)
6. Henry James
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James 1843-1916: Hawthorne (1879)
7. D. H. Lawrence
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.
D. H. Lawrence 1885-1930: Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
8. Ezra Pound
Literature is news that stays news.
Ezra Pound 1885-1972: The ABC of Reading (1934)
9. W. B. Yeats
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle age?
W. B. Yeats 1865-1939: 'On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature' (1912)
10. Jane Austen
'Oh! it is only a novel!...only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda' : or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Jane Austen 1775-1817: Northanger Abbey (1818)
11. Lord Byron
All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith.
Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan (1819-24)
12. E. M. Forster
Yes---oh dear yes---the novel tells a story.
E. M. Forster 1879-1970: Aspects of the Novel (1927)
13. Horace
Works of serious purpose and grand promises often have a purple patch or two stitched on, to shine far and wide.
Horace 65-8 bc: Ars Poetica
14. Stendhal
A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.
Stendhal 1783-1842: Le Rouge et le noir (1830)
15. Oscar Wilde
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
16. Artur Schnabel
Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand.
Artur Schnabel 1882-1951: in Saturday Review of Literature 29 September 1951
17. George Orwell
The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W. H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.
George Orwell 1903-50: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
18. Edward Bulwer-Lytton
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1803-73: Caxtoniana (1863) 'Hints on Mental Culture'
19. Vladimir Nabokov
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977: Lectures on Literature (1980)
20. Paul Valery
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. The rest is literature.
Paul Valéry 1871-1945: Moralités (1932)
| 
