Authors Quotes
-
The ancient triumph of Christianity proved to be the single greatest cultural transformation our world has ever seen.
Without it the entire history of Late Antiquity would not have happened as it did.
We would never have had the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, or modernity as we know it.
There could never have been a Matthew Arnold. Or any of the Victorian poets. Or any of the other authors of our canon: no Milton, no Shakespeare, no Chaucer.
We would have had none of our revered artists: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, or Rembrandt. And none of our brilliant composers: Mozart, Handel, or Bach.
To be sure, we would have had other Miltons, Michelangelos, and Mozarts in their places, and it is impossible to know whether these would have been better or worse.
But they would have been incalculably different.
Bart Ehrman
-
The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.
Isaac Newton
-
I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.
Nicholas Royle
-
Few authors are so interesting as their work - they generally reserve their wit or trenchant sarcasm for their books.
Alec-Tweedie
-
...I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it’s not its fault. That’s obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage. If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!
Arthur Rimbaud
-
The authors of great evils know best how to remove them.
Plutarch
-
The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.
Friedrich Nietzsche
-
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
Albert Camus
-
We have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.
Beatrice Webb
-
I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t. . . . I very much love those mysterious volumes, both ancient and modern, that have no definite author but have had and continue to have an intense life of their own. They seem to me a sort of nighttime miracle, like the gifts of the Befana, which I waited for as a child. . . . True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known. . . . Besides, isn’t it true that promotion is expensive? I will be the least expensive author of the publishing house. I’ll spare you even my presence.
Elena Ferrante
