Quotes about Literature

“All literature is gossip.”

“Remarks are not literature.”

“All literature is political.”

“Literature is news that stays news.”

“Literature is analysis after the event.”

“Literature is the immortality of speech.”

“Perversity is the muse of modern literature.”

“There can be no literary equivalent to truth.”

“Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.”

“Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.”

“A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.”

“Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.”

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”

“As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.”

“Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.”

“A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.”

“If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”

“The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”

“People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.”

“Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.”

“There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.”

“What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.”

“Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.”

“In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.”

“The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.”

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

“Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.”

“Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.”

“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”

“Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.”