Literature Quotes - Page 30

• The most important aspect of any story, to me, is character.

  Nora Roberts

  Character, Important, Stories

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• When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.

  Diane Ravitch

  Wise, Book, Pressure Groups

  "Some educators take issue with textbooks" by Casey Wian, www.cnn.com. October 15, 2003.

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• Yes, the highest things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.

  Ben Okri

  Dream, Spiritual, Art

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• Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.

  Anna Deavere Smith

  Character, People, Decision

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• I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war.

  Neil Sheehan

  War, Vietnam, Firsts

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• If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Art, Sculpture, Shade

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.77

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• I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature.

  Kenneth Koch

  Mother, Cincinnati Ohio, Sides

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• I moved here when I was 20 to go to college. After I moved here, I became much more aware of the importance of the culture and literature to my life. Sometimes when you're immersed in something, you just don't notice it very much. Moving away makes you appreciate your culture. Living here, I've thought more and more about India, and what being Indian-American means to me. And it's made me incorporate things from Indian literature into my own writing.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Moving, Writing, Mean

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• Drab Habitation of Whom? Tabernacle or Tomb - or Dome of Worm - or Porch of Gnome - or some Elf's Catacomb?

  Emily Dickinson

  Home, Domes, Worms

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.1167, Delphi Classics

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• Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Funny, Mom, Mother

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• A woman's health is her capital.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Fitness Motivational, Women's Health

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1868). “The Chimney-corner”, p.126

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• The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

  Rachel Carson

  Science, Fiction, Biographies

  "Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson" edited by Linda Lear, (p. 91), 1999.

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• Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?

  Matthew Arnold

  Voice, People, Giving

  Matthew Arnold, Stefan Collini (1993). “Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings”, p.65, Cambridge University Press

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• The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Clever, Reason, Obstinacy

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1866). “Little Foxes, Or, The Little Failings which Mar Domestic Happiness”, p.70

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• To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Common, Endeavor, Uncommon

  Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (2008). “American Woman's Home”, p.189, Applewood Books

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• I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Faith, Heathen

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (2016). “Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe”, p.199, Library of Alexandria

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• My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Art, Writing, Sight

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

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• The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Future, Past, Reality

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• This propaganda of dis-associating Western Negroes from Africa is not a new one. For many years white propagandists have been printing tons of literature to impress scattered Ethiopia, especially that portion within their civilization, with the idea that Africa is a despised place, inhabited by savages, and cannibals, where no civilized human being should go, especially black civilized human beings. This propaganda is promulgated for the cause that is being realized today. That cause is COLONIAL EXPANSION for the white nations of the world.

  Marcus Garvey

  Years, Civilization, Ideas

  Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey (1923). “The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Or, Africa for the Africans”, p.54, The Majority Press

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• Friendships are discovered rather than made.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Made

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• Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations.

  Marcus Garvey

  Stars, Wake Up, Ends

  Marcus Garvey (2015). “Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey”, p.8, Ravenio Books

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• A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Jobs, Doe, Stories

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• Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Doe, Impossible, Harm

  "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Book by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chapter 28, www.gutenberg.org. 1852.

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• I don't how I can describe the quality that is only found in art (be it music, literature, painting, or whatever), this quality, it's just there, and it endures.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Quality, Painting

  Interview with Nicholas Serota, www.timeout.com. October 10, 2011.

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• In my profession more generally, it's not an exaggeration to say that masculinity is viewed as the root of all evil. If you were to take a literary theory course, you might think it would be about literature, but it's really not. It's about all the various forms of oppression on earth and how we can see them playing out in literary works. And behind all these forms of oppression is a guy.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Thinking, Literary Theory, Roots

  "A Talk With The Savage English Professor". Interview with Sam Harris, www.thedailybeast.com. March 5, 2015.

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