Literature Quotes - Page 32

• [My mom] had always wanted to write a children's book. She was a children's librarian and an elementary school teacher, so of course she loves children and children's literature.

  Jenna Bush

  Mom, Teacher, Children

  "Jenna Bush: 'I'm living my dream job'". TODAY Interview, www.today.com. April 22, 2008.

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• Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.

  Philip Larkin

  Men, Feet, Turds

  Letter to J.B.Sutton, December 21, 1942.

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• There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.

  Anton Chekhov

  Children, People, Solomon

  Letter to M.V. Kiseleva, January 14, 1887.

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• What I have always found most beautiful in the theatre, in my childhood, and still today, is lustre--a beautiful object, luminous, crystalline, complex, circular, symmetrical. However, I do not absolutely deny the value of dramatic literature. Only, I should like the actors to be mounted on high pattens, to wear masks more expressive than the human face, and to speak through megaphones.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Beautiful, Childhood, Theatre

  Charles Baudelaire (1919). “Baudelaire, His Prose and Poetry”

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• I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a PhD in comparative literature so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called FMR, so we have a common interest in design.

  David Chipperfield

  Art, Book, Wife

  "My space". Interview with Andy Barker, www.theguardian.com. September 6, 2008.

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• We should not see print and electronic literature as in competition, but rather in conversation. The more voices that join in, the richer the dialogue is likely to be.

  N. Katherine Hayles

  Voice, Competition, Conversation

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• A masterly analysis of how political interests, economic circumstances, development strategies, and local history have shaped what are surprisingly different versions of the welfare state across the developing world. The authors combine fine-grained country analyses with intelligent use of data, and explain and extend the theory and literature on the modern welfare state. The book is both scholarly and readable.

  Nancy Birdsall

  Country, Book, Intelligent

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• There’s a different flavor to children’s literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.

  Mizuki Nomura

  Sweet, Children, Growing Up

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• Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.

  James Gunn

  Real, Past, Technological Change

  James Gunn (1979). “Road to Science Fiction 2”, Signet

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• The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Block, Men, Evil

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guarantees and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of the bourgeois of the sin of writing, for literature is, in essence, heresy. The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists, that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a matter of principle regard the writer as suspect.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Writing, Eye, Order

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• A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is . It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Believe, Two, Trying

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.121, Open Road Media

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• Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.

  William Butler Yeats

  Pieces, Becoming, Spirit

  William Butler Yeats (2017). “Ideas of Good and Evil”, p.79, Litres

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• There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Fashion, Cutting, Coats

  "Curiosities of Literature". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1791.

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• It is fortunate that Literature is in no ways injured by the follies of Collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily defend the good.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Way, Folly, Collectors

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• When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Disappointment, Writing, Loss

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.437, W. W. Norton & Company

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• A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Data, Racism

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• We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Simple, May, Legends

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.348, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Democratic leaders, whose power is ultimately dependent on popular support, are held accountable for failing to improve the lives of their citizens. Therefore, they have a powerful incentive to keep their societies peaceful and prosperous.

  Natan Sharansky

  Powerful, Leader, Support

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• The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe.

  Natan Sharansky

  Two, Democracy, Important

  "The Case for Democracy". Interview with Jamie Glazov, archive.frontpagemag.com. December 17, 2004.

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• The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.

  Samuel Johnson

  Common

  Dr John Campbell, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 1, p. 418 n. 1 (1 July 1763)

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• A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them. The possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Ignorance, Physicians

  "Exeunt the Humanities". Essay by Jacques Barzun (1980) published in his book "The Culture We Deserve" (p. 117), 1989.

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• Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

  O. Henry

  Art, Writing, Drawing

  O. Henry (2015). “O. Henry's stories: Short Stories and Classic Literature”, p.429, 谷月社

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• I am through generalizing about ideas apart from men who generate them. I am through writing books about the dead, or writing books about the living to the unborn (tucked away as Literature) or writing books about the unborn to the living (whiffed away as prophecy). I put up my life on advertising the living to the living, on making men of genius known to the people and interpreted to their time, that the time in which I live, may live face to face with its men of vision and that they may live face to face with one another.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Book, Writing, Men

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1919). “The House of Twenty Seven Gardens”

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• In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

  François-René de Chateaubriand

  Numbers, Judging, May

  "Sketches of English Literature: With Considerations on the Spirit of the Times, Men, and Revolutions". Book by François-René de Chateaubriand, translated by Henry Colburn, Volume II, p.36, 1836.

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