Literature Quotes - Page 33

• In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.

  Simone Weil

  Men, Evil, Effort

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil, Translated by R. Rees, "The responsibility of writers," p. 168, 1968.

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• During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

  Simone Weil

  Girl, Spiritual, Eye

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

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• Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.

  Mary Oliver

  Ideas, Poetry, Feelings

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.108, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.

  Karl Kraus

  Today, Patient, Written

  Aphorism collected in Heinrich Fischer (ed) Beim Wort genommen (1955). Translated by Harry Zohn in Half-truths and one-and-a-half truths (1986).

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• You can tell a man's taste in literature by his judgment in knowing what not to read.

  Evan Esar

  Men, Knowing, Taste

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• Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders.

  Horace Mann

  Taken, Borders, Warp

  Horace Mann (1872). “Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann ...”, p.105

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• Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Philosophy

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• To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Mean

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• The myth about the angel who rebelled against his Lord is the most beautiful of all myths, the proudest, the most revolutionary, the most immortal of them all.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Art

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• There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Past

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• An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Truth

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• The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Writing

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• Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Writing

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• I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Way

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• The world is kept alive only by heretics.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Alive

  As translated in A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1970) edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg, 1919.

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• It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Moving

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• Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken - errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Philosophy

  "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters " by Yevgeny Zamyatin. As translated by Mirra Ginsburg, in "A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin", 1923.

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• The inner world: those spiritual apartments to which we are reluctant to admit strangers.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Art

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• By complex ways, by looking deep into the dark well of the human soul, full of filth, somewhere at the very bottom of it Chekhov at last found his faith. And this faith turned out to be faith in man, in the power of human progress. And man became his god.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Dark

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• It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Men

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• Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.

  Marcel Theroux

  Lines, Simulacrum, Code

  Marcel Theroux (2013). “Strange Bodies”, p.74, Faber & Faber

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• It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.

  Rebecca West

  Errors, Monkeys, Curriculum

  "Rebecca West, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Marina Warner, The Paris Review, No. 79, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1981.

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• 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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• I expected more from literature than from real, naked life.

  Gunter Grass

  Real, Naked, Expected

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• Behind the big names of twentieth-century literature there stands a shadow cabinet of writers waiting to take over once the Wind of Change has blown. My own vote goes to Hugh Kingsmill as leader of this opposition.

  Hugh Kingsmill

  Wind, Names, Leader

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