Good Literature Quotes

• We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Needs, Literature, Humans

  10 Copy quote

• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Book, Reading

  Esquire, Dec. 1934

  36 Copy quote

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• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  Jane Austen

  Inspirational, Funny, Relationship

  Pride and Prejudice ch. 1 (1813)

  55 Copy quote

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• Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, I Miss You, Good Night

  'Romeo And Juliet' (1595) act 2, sc. 2, l. 176

  166 Copy quote

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• There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.

  Stephen Covey

  Inspiration, Reading, Mind

  Stephen R. Covey (2015). “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, p.379, Mango Media Inc.

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• The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Writing, Doe

  8 Copy quote

• My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

  Gene Wolfe

  Literature, Definitions, Pleasure

  12 Copy quote

• When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

  George Saintsbury

  Writing, People, Literature

  George Saintsbury (1950). “A Last Vintage: Essays and Papers”

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• I think any good literature, whether it's for children or for adults, will appeal to everybody. As far as children's literature goes, adults should be able to read it and enjoy it as much as a child would.

  Amber Benson

  Children, Thinking, Adults

  "Amber Benson: From vampires to 'Among the Ghosts'" by Louis Peitzman, www.sfgate.com. October 21, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

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• Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?

  Elif Safak

  Land, People, Culture

  14 Copy quote

• All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

  George Henry Lewes

  Literature, Insight

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• ‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Dream, Integrity, Reading

  56 Copy quote

• God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.

  Aldous Huxley

  Memories, Son, Past

  Aldous Huxley, Huxley trusts and heirs (2013). “The Genius and the Goddess: A Novel”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• I certainly don't condemn anyone who listens to audiobooks. It seems to me that any way we get good literature in our brain is worthwhile.

  John Larroquette

  Brain, Way, Literature

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Real, Book, Reading

  1941 Language in Action.

  42 Copy quote

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• Good literature makes your head throb heartlike

  David Foster Wallace

  Literature

  12 Copy quote

• Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

  Toni Morrison

  Political, Important, Literature

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

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• The short story, its course plotted and its form proscribed, has become too efficient... but efficiency is not the most, it is perhaps the least, important among the undoubted elements of good literature

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Important, Stories, Elements

  Henry Seidel Canby (1922). “Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism”

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• Ways to be actively involved in the solution: 1. Consider adoption. 2. Be a regular giver of your money to Crisis Pregnancy Centers. 3. Volunteer in a Crisis Pregnancy Center. 4. Be involved in spreading truth with good literature. 5. Make your presence know at the abortion clinics in town (by) writing or phoning or visiting and talking, if you can, with those who work there. 6. Dream a new kind of ministry. 7. Pray!

  John Piper

  Dream, Pregnancy, Writing

  5 Copy quote

• Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Men, Enemy

  Henry Miller (1957). “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

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• The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mistake, Reading, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Any literature, when it arrives at being good literature, transcends genre.

  Vanna Bonta

  Literature, Genre, Be Good

  "Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview". Interview with Laurel van der Linde, 2007.

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• The age was still dark and reeked of the havoc and misfortunes of the Goths who had put all good literature to destruction. But, by God's goodness, in my time light and dignity were returned to letters, and I see there such improvement that today I would have great difficulty being admitted to the most elementary classes--I, who in my time was reputed to be (and not wrongly) to be the most knowledgeable person of the century.

  Francois Rabelais

  Education, Knowledge, Dark

  4 Copy quote

• Science is not just there for technology. It's part of what addressing who you are in the universe and understanding your place in the cosmos. Good art, good literature, good music - all of that is for that and science is a part of it.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Art, Technology, Understanding

  "Making science interesting. Lawrence Krauss discusses what happens to scientific literacy". "The 7.30 Report" with Leigh Sales, www.abc.net.au. June 29, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

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• It did occur to me that the effect of good literature may be as dizzying as that of alcohol.

  Pamela Dean

  Alcohol, Literature, May

  Pamela Dean (2006). “Tam Lin”, p.283, Penguin

  45 Copy quote

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