Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.
For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.
"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.
Whatever is powerful to you can be translated into something which will matter to somebody that you will never know.
We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.
Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.
Be able to suffer wearing a necktie or slightly high heels for an entire evening without complaint or early removal.
I grew up in an non-athletic family, where my parents were interested in music, in literature, in education and art.
Literature seemed to be everything then. People looked to it for the strength to live, for guidance, for revelation.
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
The really amazing part, to me, was when Florida made it into the Final Four, the Democrats didn't demand a recount.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.
My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.
From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the best of my chance.
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
My religion is complicated. Literature is my true religion. After all, I come from a completely non-religious family.
Having achieved and accomplished love, then the man passes into the unknown. He has become himself, his tale is told.
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.
Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.
I have never considered myself a poet. Therefore, I am not a rival of anyone, and I do not consider anybody my rival.
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature.
The most prevalent poetic representation of contemporary experience is the mimesis of disorientation by non sequitor.
That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.
My two sons speak Hebrew, and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.
The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.
I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.
The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Literature was intended to be dangerous. Art was meant to be dangerous. Ideas were nothing if they were not dangerous.
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.
Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.
As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.