Literature Quotes - Page 11

• Socrates wrote nothing. Christ wrote nothing.

  Iris Murdoch

  Christ

  Iris Murdoch (1984). “The Sacred and Profane Love Machine”, p.88, Penguin

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• I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

  Anne Stevenson

  Loyal, Austen, Schubert

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• I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

  Anna Quindlen

  Wanted, Persons, Comfortable

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.59, Ballantine Books

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• In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

  Franz Kafka

  Goodness, Certain

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

  Franz Kafka

  World

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

  Franz Kafka

  Men, Evil, Mediation

  Franz Kafka (1954). “Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod”

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• We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.

  Alberto Manguel

  Beautiful, Order, Perfect

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• People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves. What I'm desperately trying to do is to get students to talk to themselves as though they are indeed themselves, and not someone else.

  Harold Bloom

  Reading, Writing, People

  "Falstaff for our times". www.theguardian.com. March 5, 1999.

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• I hate everything which is not in myself.

  Norman Mailer

  Hate, Ego, I Hate

  Norman Mailer (2013). “The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author”, p.164, Henry Holt and Company

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• Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

  Norman Mailer

  Revolution, Individual, Periods

  "Barbary Shore". Book by Norman Mailer, 1951.

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• When you deal with your brother, be pleasant, but get a witness.

  Hesiod

  Family, Brother, Witness

  Hesiod (1991). “My Brother's Killer”, p.63, University of Michigan Press

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• There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Infinity, Infinite, Barbs

  Charles Baudelaire (1951). “My heart laid bare, and other prose writings”

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• My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Writing, Forget, My Family

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• Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way.

  Cyril Connolly

  Hate, Long, Littles

  Cyril Connolly (1975). “The evening colonnade”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Rap, Thinking, People

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• Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end...

  Karel Capek

  Triumph, Might, Melancholy

  "Karel Čapek: Life and Work". Book by Ivan Klima, 2002.

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• One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

  Karel Capek

  People, Principles, Satisfaction

  "Letters from England". Book by Karel Capek, 1925.

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• Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition.

  Karel Capek

  Fighting, Creating, Cognition

  "On Relativism". Book by Karel Capek, 1925.

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• Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.

  Karel Capek

  Inheritance, England, Dignity

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• The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

  Elias Canetti

  Thinking, Two, Differences

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• One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Blood, Style, Tire

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• The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Doubt, Mania

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• One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.

  Joseph Joubert

  Men, Joy, Religion

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• I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

  Jim Harrison

  Enough, Rational, Journalist

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. June 7, 2004.

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• I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

  Jim Harrison

  Inevitable, Felt

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