Literature Quotes
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The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
John le Carre
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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;
Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.
William Butler Yeats
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I live to the rhythm of my country and I cannot remain on the sidelines. I want to be here. I want to be part of it. I want to be a witness. I want to walk arm in arm with it. I want to hear it more and more, to cradle it, to carry it like a medal on my chest. Activism is a constant element in my life, even though afterwards I anguish over not having written 'my own things.' Testimonial literature provides evidence of events that people would like to hide, denounces and therefore is political and part of a country in which everything remains to be done and documented.
Elena Poniatowska
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Eighteen centuries have passed since the Bible was finished. They have been centuries of great changes. In their course the world has been wrought over into newness at almost every point. But, to-day, the text of the Scriptures, after copyings almost innumerable and after having been tossed about through ages of ignorance and tumult, is found by exhaustive criticism to be unaltered in every important particular — there being not a single doctrine, nor duty, nor fact of any grade, that is brought into question by variations of readings — a fact that stands alone in the history of such ancient literature.
Enoch Fitch Burr
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Since I have fought against these Jewish-Soviet ideas in Germany, since I have conquered and stamped out this peril, I fancy that I possess a better comprehension of its character than do these men who have only to deal with it in the field of literature.
Adolf Hitler
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I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.
Vladimir Putin
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Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.
Northrop Frye
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Some one, I think it was Isaac Disraeli, said that he who did not make himself acquainted with the best thoughts of the greatest writers would one day be mortified to observe that his best thoughts are their indifferent ones, and it is from the great books that have stood the test of time that we shall get, not only the most lasting pleasure, but a standard by which to measure our own thoughts, the thoughts of others, and the excellence of the literature of our own day.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
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The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass
Virginia Woolf
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I studied psychology in school, and the best psychology is in literature. It's so much easier to understand a character than a theory. You can recognize yourself—or other people—in a different way.
Natalie Portman
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Unpredictable action is movement's equivalent to a page-turner in literature. On stage, we have certain options to make our moves appear surprising or even shocking. One choice is to remove transitions. We try to construct motion hunks, hunks of action that could be missed if an audience member blinks.
Elizabeth Streb
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Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.
Gary Saul Morson
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Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
Adolf Hitler
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Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Virginia Woolf
