Literature Quotes

I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies.

Samskrit has moulded the minds of our people to the extent to which they themselves are not conscious. Samskrit literature is national in one sense, but its purpose has been universal. That was why it commanded the attention of people who were not followers of a particular culture.

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

Pray, look better, sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

Nothing can be done except little by little.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

It is not possible either to trick or escape the mind of Zeus.

Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness.

A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Very few of us are what we seem.

Love your neighbor as yourself but don't take down your fence.

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.

Hardware works best when it matters the least.

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

Know how and how much to tip people who expect gratuities, even in the case of poor service.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible.

The Thriller album is still the biggest album of all time. That is still returning huge royalty cheques.

We have a society in which one of the greatest things you can do is a platform to see victim status, and one of the qualifications for that is that you have these exquisitely tender feelings about things and sensibilities which are easily offended.

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.