Literature Quotes

Two forces create eternity – a fairy tale and a dream from the fairy tale.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

A big desire is not enough to meet the expectations of lost dreams.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Into the day as by dream I swim To the music of nourished meaning.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

You ask how it is possible to be your own father and son. You should seek answers, although it is better to anticipate some, to be the light and dream.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Without travels, our existence, our memories, our literature, our dreams, our everything would be very poor, very boring, very limited!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

~ Susan Sontag

When I was a student, there wasn't a single thing we did that was unrelated to others. It was all for the Emperor, or parents, or the country, or society—everything was other-centered, which means that all educated men were hypocrites. When society changed, this hypocrisy ceased to work, and as a result, self-centeredness was gradually imported into thought and action, and egoism became enormously over-developed. Instead of the old hypocrites, now all we've got are out-and-out rogues. Do you see what I mean by that?

~ Sōseki Natsume

The call for political freedom took place long ago. The call for freedom of speech is also a thing of the past. Freedom is not a word to be used exclusively for phenomena such as this which are so easily given outward manifestation. I believe that we young men of the new age have encountered the moment in time when we must call for that great freedom, the freedom of the mind.

~ Sōseki Natsume

Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.

~ Susanna Clarke

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

~ Oscar Wilde

I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he'd printed. He said I'll just print another ten.

~ Eric Sykes

A spy novel?” Dagmar asked. “You two are talking about a spy nov

~ G.a. Aiken

Books are an absolute necessity. I always have at least two with me wherever I go, to say nothing of my digital collection, and whenever I can get my hands on a delicious new reading piece, I will finish it at a slackened pace, to savour it with all the esteem it deserves, gratulating in its pleasance, deliciating in every word with ardent affection. I have an extensive library that I could never do without, and there are at least four books decorating every surface in my house. A table is not properly set without a book to furnish it. Half of my great collection is non-fiction, mostly science and history books, ranging from the archaeological to the agricultural, and my fiction section is dedicated to the classics, mostly books published before the world forgot about exquisite prose. I have all the greats in hardcover, but I do not read those: hardcover is for smelling and touching only. For all my favourite authors, I have reading copies, which I might take with me anywhere, to read in cafes or to be used as a swatting tool for unwanted visitors, but books are always fashionable even as ornaments; everyone likes a reader, for a good collection of books betrays a intellectualism that is becoming at anytime. Never succumb to the friable wills of those who reject the majesty of books: there is nothing so repelling as willful illiteracy.

~ Michelle Franklin

The longest piece of literature I've read lately was a tattoo on this biker I picked up last night. It said, If you're this close, you've gotta suck it.

~ Eric Arvin

Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

There is nothing political about American literature.

~ Laura Bush

I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism without ignoring the political dimension. Even if I have failed in this synthesis, I have found the attempt worth making.

~ Christopher Hitchens

For life is too short to resign ourselves to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women we don't love.

~ Anne Garréta

Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature.

~ Ernest Hemingway

(on the portrayal of women in literature) Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree, the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

~ Jane Austen

The chaos of their voices registers as a single, overwhelming force cutting off her ability to reason, and all she wants is to get as far away from people as possible.

~ Zainab Omaki

Nothing is made, nothing disappears. The same changes, at the same places, never stopping.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

There is a love for structure in them that I recognize, and a desire to worship correctness that I know and I share. When I look at them, I think: to prize traditionalism above all else in a church that began in revolution is to do a great violence to it. But I feel that same ache for the past in myself: to uphold the columns of literature, grammar, the Western tradition. The English language began as an upheaval; I am not protecting it when I try to guard it against change. The Jesus Christ of it, Chaucer, walked across the water telling dirty jokes, made twenty stories stretch to feed a million people, spelled the word cunt five ways, performed miracles. Any innovation I put down on paper is an attempt to remind myself of this. I am not modern. I was not born to blaze new paths or bring down walls. I break form against my nature to tell myself that revolution, too, is a tradition that must be upheld.

~ Patricia Lockwood

Remember, life is a bit tough most of the time.Also remember, if it was easy it would be boring.

~ Akash Lakhotia

Change for someone today and tomorrow you will hear them say, You are not the same.

~ Akash Lakhotia

There is a reason life has put you in the current circumstances,Life will always test you, it will always try to make you stronger.Life only wants you to be better then you were yesterday.

~ Akash Lakhotia

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words have the ability to change our lives simply by being next to each other.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon, to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

~ Henry James

It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

There is something perfect to be found in the imperfect: the law keeps balance through the juxtaposition of beauty, which gains perfection through nurtured imperfection.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of other souls.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Words his soul danced to.

~ David Malouf

Literature will save me it's the only certainty i am sure of.

~ Nikki Rowe

Every soul that existed on earth is part of earth human history.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.

~ Roman Payne

To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.

~ Fernando Pessoa