Literature Quotes

When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.

~ Ovid

Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

The idiot willingness to choose sides is what feeds the abattoir of history.

~ Steven Heighton

Creators of history always play with our impotence and our ignorance.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

History will be erased in the universal purgatory.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice.

~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By reclaiming this use of literature in the classroom, perhaps we can move away from the political agitation that has been our bread and butter—or porridge and hardtack—for the last 30 years.

~ Scott Herring

The past is not another country; it is another life. The texture of daily living is different now than in the past, more different the further back we look, until we find people whose experiences created a psychology we might find baffling or rude. Many details that once made up the daily round are lost to us because people considered them too trivial to write down. Knowing the past means knowing what people carried in their pockets, what they did with their sewage, where their dogs slept. Those details may seem unimportant, but what they convey is not.

~ Scott Herring

Pull back the curtain and jump down the rabbit hole.

~ Brad Jensen

Fall into the cavern of my mind, and together there, we will dine.

~ Brad Jensen

Seek to know the history of the sacred souls.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The history of time is captured by poet, artist, writer, photographer…!

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life is a rich literature. We are only writing the history of our time.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We are only writing the history of our time.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Today is the beginning of new history.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life is a great Book. We are writing the history of our time.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life consists of books.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The life of the spirit is enfold in great literature.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The greatest literature is the Biblical stories.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

History must be documented, every moment is a sacred history.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Ancient literature is a rich history.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Any experience, which is not written, will be lost in time. Rich literature is lost forever.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life consists of books. All experiences are stories to be told and must be written.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Upon reading, great stories by Great Spirits, the glorious inspiration penetrated our soul; we can’t help but to shed tears. It was a soul soothing and a deep spiritual awaken.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides.

~ Adam Nicolson

We encounter great souls, who lived in historical times, in ancient books.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There lived great souls in the history of the world.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We travel to ancient times by reading history books.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.

~ C.s. Lewis

Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes you more human by making life more, not less, difficult. When you become more aware, the area of moral choice is widened. You can be a better man; you can also be a worse. Literature will not determine which. It is the equivalent of neither grace nor good works.

~ Eric Bentley

For Japanese people before 1868, Europeans were little more than curious beasts, strange and incomprehensible. Then, after the Meiji Restoration, everything changed. Along with European science and technology, European art flooded into Japan, all forms of it representing themselves as the universal—and most advanced—model. The same was true of novels. The Japanese, with characteristic diligence, began to read masterpieces of European literature, first in the original and then in translation. And such is the power of literature that through the act of reading, little by little the Japanese came to live the lives of Europeans as if they were their own. They began to live the ambitions of Julien Sorel, the happiness of Jane Eyre, the sufferings of young Werther, and the despair of Anna Karenina as if they were their own. They thus began living a new temporality—that which flows in the West, dictated by the Gregorian calendar, marked by major historical events in the West. And by so doing, they eventually joined what the Europeans called humanity.

~ Minae Mizumura

Nothing is inanimate, what is the rest is our interpretation.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

What we call life is only talk of nature.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its façade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you. Hampstead Heath! Glory of London! Where Keats walked and Jarman fucked, where Orwell exercised his weakened lungs and Constable never failed to find something holy.

~ Zadie Smith

Since nothing is absolute There is no absolute silence, Only an appearance Of temporary peace.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.

~ Dave Digrazie

It's literature that provides solace to hearts wounded by man made divisions of religion, race, class, gender and class...

~ Neelam Saxena Chandra

The day arrived,when myriad teary rivers flow and the muted wind faintly died in his tears—an altar for the beloved one's departure,for sister-hood is no more,for her to adore!while pangs the beating world in a lamenting voice;their remembering loss of the 'one' they embrace most and when the crepuscule came like a phantom,the mournful,gathered birds swiftly flew in gloom.

~ Nithin Purple

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

~ John Milton

Pain is there when you are born,Its the very first thing you feel when you come in to the world.Then why run? Face it head on, cry in it,laugh in it because in the end pain is what you will remember.

~ Akash Lakhotia