Good Literature Quotes - Page 2

• Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

  William Dean Howells

  War, Degrees, Doe

  William Dean Howells (1969). “The Friendly Fire”

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• The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

  Ethel Smyth

  Clouds, Indulge In, Personality

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Art, Blood, Literature

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• Just as composers go to concerts and artists visit galleries, writers read. You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books.

  Judith Barrington

  Reading, Book, Artist

  Judith Barrington (2002). “Writing the Memoir”

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• In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.

  Walter Moers

  Successful, Years, Genius

  Walter Moers (2008). “The City of Dreaming Books”, p.72, The Overlook Press

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• For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature.

  Junot Diaz

  Art, Fall, Thinking

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• No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Reading, People, Fiction

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• Climbing Jacob''s Ladder is a gutsy, glowing account of one man's encounter with a potent spiritual practice and how it transformed his life. This is a precious book - that rare combination of solid wisdom and good literature.

  Larry Dossey

  Spiritual, Book, Men

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