Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925) American Educator, Writer
A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Scientist, Critic, Writer
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Every man’s memory is his private literature.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and the afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and places and how the weather was.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
It is the story-teller’s task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however naive that may have been, it was a good deal less naive than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American Novelist
There, is first, the literature of knowledge; and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is, to teach; of the second is, to move; the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.
—Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) English Essayist, Writer, Author, Scholar
I doubt if anything learnt at school is of more value than great literature learnt by heart.
—Richard Livingstone (1880–1960) British Scholar, Educator, Academic
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
—Earl of Chesterfield
The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
—Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish Songwriter, Novelist, Painter
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.
—William Motter Inge (1913–73) American Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Journalist, Short Story Writer, Novelist, Essayist
Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
—C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) Irish-born British Novelist
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
—P. D. James (b.1920) British Novelist
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873