Literature Quotes - Page 39

• The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.

  William H. Prescott

  Intellectual, Mind, Spirit

  WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT (1858). “BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES”, p.245

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• I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.

  Baldur von Schirach

  Spiritual, Conceited, Profound

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.

  Tom Shippey

  Trying, Fiction, Hard

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• The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

  Irwin Shaw

  Stories, Lasts, Paragraph

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• What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

  Rex Stout

  Trials, Obscenity

  Rex Stout (2013). “Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men”, Bantam

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• As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Writing, Math

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• The more I read, the less I admire modern theology. the more I study the productions of the new schools of theological teachers, the more I marvel that men and women can be satisfied with such writings. There is a vagueness, a mistiness, a shallowness, an indistinctness, a superficiality, an aimlessness, a hollowness about the literature of the 'broader and kinder systems', as they are called, which to my mind stamps their origin on their face. They are of the earth, earthy.

  J. C. Ryle

  Teacher, Writing, School

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• In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it.

  Frederick Lenz

  Drama, School, Contemporary Fiction

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• In reading, in literature and poetry, I found an artistic freedom that I didn't see at Woolworth's. I would read everything from Shakespeare to science fiction ... sometimes a book a day.

  Frederick Lenz

  Book, Reading, Fiction

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• I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things.

  Frederick Lenz

  Yoga, Buddhism, Psychics

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• The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sports, Writing, Animal

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.267

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• Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fashion, Writing, Mind

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Hero, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.406

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• A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

  A. S. Byatt

  Children, Book, Numbers

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• The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.

  Geoffrey K. Pullum

  Book, Reading, Thinking

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• The poor Geordies are in the process of being rebuffed by every sentient human being whose ambition in life is more than simply to pocket six million quid for having been a failure and run for the hills. They want beautiful, flowing football and tangible success, at St James' Park. Fine. I, meanwhile, want Jessica Alba and the Nobel prize for literature. I make my prospects slightly more realistic.

  Rod Liddle

  Beautiful, Soccer, Football

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• If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be the private ownership of the means of production as a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art, and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Wisdom, Art, Mean

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• I say you must not win an unjust case by oaths.

  Aeschylus

  Lying, Winning, Unjust

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• Mourn for me rather as living than as dead.

  Aeschylus

  Mourn

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• We shall perish by guile just as we slew.

  Aeschylus

  Guile

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• The thing I love about reporting is being able to blend in with any group, whether that's neo-Nazis or pedophiles.

  Anderson Cooper

  Able, Groups, Things I Love

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• That is what I'm looking forward to the most, practical learning. I want to be a registered nurse so getting to talk to people who already work in those jobs can really teach me what to expect when I get out in the real world.

  Angela Carter

  Jobs, Real, Nurse

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• I'm not going to be lectured to.

  Ann Coulter

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• I've decided to cut out the part of the speech where I say anything nice about Democrats.

  Ann Coulter

  Nice, Cutting, Say Anything

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• Among other things they picked out a detail that Charles had been offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in its dying days by Thatcher in return for shutting up about the inner cities. He quite rightly in my view led the paper on this story.

  Anthony Holden

  Views, Cities, Dying

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