Literature Quotes
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But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
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I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.
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There are those who believe we have need of more literature, of a large international publishing house, of a great peace newspaper, or the like. I am rather skeptical about this idea.
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There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky.
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There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us where we park our anxieties, whether its over-powerful women, death or damnation. We make our own monsters.
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We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.
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What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.
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Literature is the history of the soul.
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When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.
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Have no regrets. Every relationship leads you to where you're meant to be. Learn to be comfortable with being alone. Learn to be comfortable with saying no to people; we put everybody else before ourselves. Read great literature; don't get all your information from TV. Define your moral code - nobody else is going to give you that. Find it yourself. Keep asking questions, keep challenging. You don't have to conform. Rebellion creates character. And, as my mother always said to me, "Don't let anyone break your spirit!"
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I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.
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The reason we love nature is because it's fascinating and we love all the creatures, but if you watch any nature film, there's always a lesson: "the creatures are all dying and life sucks." The same is true of literature.
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The 20th century is a period defined by cultural and artistic movements. However, the 21st century creative-scape that we occupy now doesn't really have movements in the same way. Instead it's made up of diverse individuals working across various platforms simultaneously; art, architecture, film, music and literature.
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Literature has always been a part of my life. I studied history and literature in college. My mother is a novelist; I grew up around books.
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What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.
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Lovers of literature will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism.
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As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake.
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All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
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I had many moments of disappointment, despondency, and exhaustion, but I always found that by reading the literature and showing up at my lab looking at the data as they emerged day by day and discussing them with my students and postdoctoral fellows, I would gain a notion of what to do next.
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To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.
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All things truly wicked start from innocence.
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People around the world now complain about stressors everyday, and the word shows up throughout professional and lay literature. But in reality there is no such thing as a stressor. Why not? Because nothing has the inherent power to provoke stress.
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I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature. People find it odd that I went to both Harvard and Yale, and I guess it is odd, but that's just what people did where I grew up.
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Is there a gender gap in the music industry? It is true that there are more professional male music creators than female. For some reason, it's taking a lot longer in music than in literature and the visual arts to reach equilibrium. It was almost acceptable by the 19th century for female writers to be published, yet it's only in the last couple of decades, since about 1980, that historical female composers have really emerged.
