Literature Quotes

Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.

G. K. Chesterton

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

George Bernard Shaw

Develop interest in life as you see it in people, things, literature, music - The world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Henry Mille

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

Phillips Brooks

Sigmund Freud was a half baked Viennese quack. Our literature, culture, and the the films of Woody Allen would be better today if Freud had never written a word.

Ian Shoales