LITERATURE

Related Subjects: Art, Authors, Books, Drama, Letters, Poets, Reading, Writing

1. Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.—GEORGE ADE, Fables in Slang
   

2. "Only a novel" . .. in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.—JANE AUSTEN, Northanger Abbey
   

3. A national literature ought to be built, as the robin builds its nest, out of the twigs and straws of one's native meadows.—VAN WYCK BROOKS, The Flowering of New England
   

4. I think it is entirely possible that a number of things which have been established as classics through sheer persistency are no great shakes . . . A thing is neither true nor beautiful because the world has clung to it for a thousand years.—HEYWOOD BROUN, The Last Review
   

5. In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.—BULWER-LYTTON, Caxtonia
   

6. Literature is an investment of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent times.—JOHN BURROUGHS, Literary Fame
   

7. There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.—CARLYLE, Scott
   

8. To have lived in vain must be a painful thought to any man, and especially so to him who has made literature his profession.—COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria
   

9. Never pursue literature as a trade.—COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria
   

10. Literature is the greatest of all sources of refined pleasure, and one of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable us to enjoy that pleasure.—THOMAS H. HUXLEY, A Liberal Education
    

11. "The literary world," said he, "is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed soon to fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily on to immortality."—WASHINGTON IRVING, Tales of a Traveller

12. It is amazing how little literature there is in the world.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
    

13. There are masterpieces which are acknowledged to be such by all the best critics and to which the historians of literature devote considerable space, yet which no ordinary person can now read with enjoyment . . . I have read George Eliot's Adam Bede, but I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that it was with pleasure. I read it from a sense of duty: I finished it with a sigh of relief.—SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Books and You
    

14. Literature—the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.—JOHN MORLEY, Burke
    

15. After all, there is no such literature as a dictionary.—SIR WILLIAM OSLER, Life of Sir William Osler
    

16. It is with literature as with law or empire—an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne, in possession.—POE
    

17. So complex and various are the elements of literature that no writer can be damned on a mere enumeration of faults. He may always possess merits which make up for everything; if he loses on the swings, he may win on the roundabouts.—LYTTON STRACHEY, Portraits in Miniature
    

18. A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.—MARK TWAIN, The Disappearance of Literature
    

19. In the civilization of today it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond all.—WALT WETITMAN, Democratic Vistas
    

20. That complete statement which is literature.—VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Common Reader