Top Literature Quotes

Without pleasure there is no sight or measure.

Dream by making and make by dreaming.

Literature Definition

(n.) Learning; acquaintance with letters or books.

(n.) The collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing; also, the whole body of literary productions or writings upon a given subject, or in reference to a particular science or branch of knowledge, or of a given country or period; as, the literature of Biblical criticism; the literature of chemistry.

(n.) The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge; belles-lettres.

(n.) The occupation, profession, or business of doing literary work.

These two oo in "book" are like the two eyes of a reader who fell in love with a story.

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (cu...

Perfection seems sterile; it is final, no mystery in it; it's a product of an assembly line.

Absolute equals nothingness.

You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,' Ellen told her daughter. 'You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen...

History will be erased in the universal purgatory.

No reason for a feverish rush For we will all arrive in the same place At the right time. Justice will be served. There will be no better or worse, No big and small, no rewards, no punishment, No guil...

Are we not acceptable, moon? Are we not lovely sitting together here, I in my satin; he in black and white?

I imagined I was God for a millisecond And became speechless for a long time.

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuéesQui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

What’s missing from the literature of our species are the stories of the peasants. The filthy illiterate. Those with no firm address, no surname. No one to impress, nothing to lose. But the poor tell...

There is always the question why And there is always life, Which doesn't need an answer.

I can't bear literary snobbery.

He loved words, and he would admit that he was playing with them all the time. He was obsessive about the rhythm of the sentence, and would add a word, subtract a word. [about Truman Capote]

Every man needs his Siren To check his courage and strength When he hears her song In his travels through the unknown.

Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.