Literature Quotes

It is not Kafka's fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.

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.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional, quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open, it loves art, it loves music, it loves literature. It's very warm, it's very up, it's very down. I would celebrate that.

When literature exists, perhaps we do not notice how important it is, but when it does not exist, our lives become coarsened and brutal. For this reason, I am proud of my profession, but also aware of its importance.

Remarks are not literature.

A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.

The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.

I am interested in things happening around me, and I need to understand what's going on in other artistic sectors like music and literature.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

To those of you who study history, economics, sociology, literature and language I present the challenge of the utilization of the enormous resources in our grasp to the problem of creating a genuinely good life for yourselves and your children.

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

But picketing - picketing for or against something, and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

The writer studies literature, not the world.

To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.

During our stay in London for the first time I was able to establish personal contact with some of the organic chemists, whose work I knew and admired from the literature. I found them most gracious and helpful.

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

I wish to share and pass down some of my generation's traits, and encourage young people to create their own art, music, and literature.

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

You can use your means in a good and bad way. In German-speaking art, we had such a bad experience with the Third Reich, when stories and images were used to tell lies. After the war, literature was careful not to do the same, which is why writers began to reflect on the stories they told and to make readers part of their texts. I do the same.

As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature.