A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there, that of the pulse, the heart beat.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
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
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Every man’s memory is his private literature.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
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
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
The great standard of literature, as to purity and exactness of style, is the Bible.
—Hugh Blair (1718–1800) Scottish Preacher, Scholar, Critic
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
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, Critic
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 Philosopher, Physicist
Nothing lives in literature but that which has in it the vitality of creative art; and it would be safe advice to the young to read nothing but what is old.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873?1939) English Novelist, Poet, Critic
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Political Leader, Writer, Editor, Journalist
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
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
The decline of literature indicates the decline of the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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
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
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.
—William Motter Inge (1913–73) American Playwright, Novelist
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
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) Anglo-Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter
What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
—Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) English Theatre Director, Author
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
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 Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
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
Remarks are not literature.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
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
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.
—George Borrow (1803–81) English Writer, Traveler
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
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
If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.
—Stephane Mallarme (1842–98) French Symbolist Poet
It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Literary Theorist, Philosopher, Critic
The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
Literature is the immortality of speech.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) German Poet, Literary Critic, Scholar
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
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
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
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
When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign — a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don’t want to hear the word mentioned.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
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
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
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
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist