Literature Quotes - Page 14

• They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Mind, May

  1869 Of Trevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. He Knew He Was Right, ch.38.

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• What is there that money will not do?

  Anthony Trollope

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Way We Live Now”, p.198, Booklassic

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• When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Decision, Mess

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• The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.

  Edith Hamilton

  Father, Mind, Generations

  Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

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• I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate.

  James Herbert

  Book, Thinking

  "From the archive: James Herbert on rats and redemption". Interview with Andrew Billen, www.theguardian.com. 1993.

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• In 1938, when I had decided that the only way to see the country was in a trailer, and I built the trailer which I still have and lived in it for eighteen months, and learned America from San Diego to the Canadian border, from Miami to New Jersey, and east to west in between.

  Leslie Charteris

  Country, America, West

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• Everything I write is designed to be milked to the last drop of revenue.

  Leslie Charteris

  Writing, Lasts, Revenue

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• Revolutions are not made with literature. Revolutions equal gunfire.

  Francois Duvalier

  Revolution, Made, Equal

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• Are you aware that your spirit needs to be fed? Did you know that your spirit would be delighted to partake in a feast of spiritual food? How about a plate full of prayer? Or maybe a few hours of succulent self-reflection. Perhaps a piping-hot selection of spiritual literature, served by the side of a lake or under a tree, would satisfy your spiritual hunger. Can you imagine feasting for a few hours on spiritually uplifting music? What about some forgiveness à la mode, topped with compassion? You cannot imagine how much your spirit would enjoy it.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Uplifting, Spiritual, Prayer

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• [May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Spiritual, Art, Science

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• I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Moving, Science, Thinking

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• ...a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Religious, Science, Men

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British Poets”, p.205

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• She [Chien-Shiung Wu] is a slave driver. She is the image of the militant woman so well known in Chinese literature as either empress or mother.

  Emilio G. Segre

  Mother, Science, Chinese

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• The case I shall find evidence for is that when literature arrives, it expels science.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Cases, Evidence

  Peter Brian Medawar (1973). “The hope of progress: a scientist looks at problems in philosophy, literature and science”, Anchor

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• New media may at first appear as mere codes of transmission for older achievement and established patterns of thought. But nobody could make the mistake of supposing that phonetic writing merely made it possible for the Greeks to set down in visual order what they had though and known before writing. In the same way printing made literature possible. It did not merely encode literature.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Mistake, Writing, Media

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• I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.

  Martin Luther

  Education, Mean, People

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• I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.

  Bob Woodward

  Believe, Thinking, Air

  "Watergate: 25 Years Later". The Washington Post Live Online discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. June 17, 1997.

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• Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

  William Styron

  Writing, Past, Judging

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

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• Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

  Adam Gopnik

  Sex, Writing, Self

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• To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

  Gao Xingjian

  Lying, Writing, Quality

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• When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

  Anne Rice

  Writing, Enough, I Can

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• Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Men, Alarms

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “Making Waves: Essays”, p.52, Macmillan

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• If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, Doe

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• The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.

  E. M. Forster

  Writing, Mountain, Swamps

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• I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

  Richard Ford

  Reading, Beats, Extras

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