English Literature Quotes - Page 3

• I didn't see many female politicians on TV. I didn't see women in history textbooks, so I did geography, and art and English literature. But I know I must have been affected by not seeing women represented.

  Emma Watson

  Art, Female, Textbooks

  Interview with Geena Davis, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 25, 2016.

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• I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum.. you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns.

  Richard Dawkins

  Education, Business, Believe

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• English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Views, Ethnicity, Discipline

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• Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

  Dale Carnegie

  Suicide, Giving Up, Writing

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.21, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers.

  James Kelman

  Stars, Reading, Emotional

  James Kelman (2012). “And the Judges Said&…: Essays”, p.56, Birlinn

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• The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Doe, Culture

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.67, 谷月社

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• I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work.

  Natalie Massenet

  Years, California, Degrees

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• I studied English Literature. I wasn’t a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well.

  Christopher Nolan

  College, Thinking, Literature

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• At graduation, I assumed I'd be in publishing, but first I went to England and got a master's degree in English Literature. And then I came back to New York and had a series of publishing jobs, the way one does.

  Joseph Kanon

  Jobs, New York, Firsts

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• Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Literature, Remember

  "Henry Louis Gates Uncovers 'Faces Of America'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. February 17, 2010.

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• My master's degree was in English literature.

  Sylvia Browne

  Degrees, Literature, Masters

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• I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Mean, Honor, Literature

  "Interview: Jeffrey Eugenides on writing in C major". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 29, 2011.

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• I was always drawn to teachers who made class interesting. In high school, I enjoyed my American and English literature classes because my teachers, Jeanne Dorsey and Dani Barton, created an environment where interaction was important.

  Ellen Ochoa

  Teacher, School, Class

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• My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.

  Bernie Taupin

  Mother, Father, War

  "Bernie Taupin: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. January 2, 2012.

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• The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way. Dakota Johnson, who plays the virgin English-literature major Anastasia Steele, and Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian Grey, the wildly rich and sexually particular business titan who wants Miss Steele in his playroom, are exceedingly attractive actors with enviably supple bodies well suited to nakedness. And really, under the circumstances, movable parts matter more than acting skills.

  Lisa Schwarzbaum

  Christian, Book, Play

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• It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.

  Rebecca West

  Errors, Literature, Monkeys

  "Rebecca West, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Marina Warner, The Paris Review, No. 79, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1981.

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• We are lucky in the United States to have our liberal arts system. In most countries, if you go to university, you have to decide for all English literature or no literature, all philosophy or no philosophy. But we have a system that is one part general education and one part specialization. If your parents say you've got to major in computer science, you can do that. But you can also take general education courses in the humanities, and usually you have to.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Country, Art, Philosophy

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• I studied English literature at university, but for some reason we only spent one week on [Charles] Dickens, so I remember just trying to find the shortest book that I could find. I was like, "'Hard Times,' really great - it's short, that'll do it."

  Felicity Jones

  Book, Hard Times, Trying

  Source: www.shockya.com

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• I would tell myself to get more sleep! Believe it or not, I wrote the book while finishing my PhD in English literature. It was wonderful to get away from doing literary scholarship by writing this mythical love story. I think so much of my own love for books and scholarship comes through in The Thorn and the Blossom.

  Theodora Goss

  Book, Believe, Sleep

  Source: www.bookequals.com

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• If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.

  Sean O'Casey

  Literature, Way, Fleas

  Sean O'Casey (1975). “The Letters of Sean O'Casey: 1910-41”, Catholic University of America Press

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