Literature Quotes

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Henry David Thoreau

Literature is news that stays news.

Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934) chapter 8

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Isaac Asimov

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

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

Sinclair Lewis

The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.

Dorothy Parke

But what is the difference between literature and journalism... Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

Oscar Wilde