Literature

"Literature must, of necessity, express and articulate the deepest perceptions, relationships, and attitudes of a culture, whether it does so deliberately or accidentally."

"The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian grounds. My own conviction is that if English is to be thus justified it must be primarily by what I am terming the discipline of ideas."

"Literature is one facet of a culture. The significance of a literature can be best understood in terms of the culture from which it springs, and the purpose of literature is clear only when the reader understands and accepts the assumptions on which the literature is based. A person who was raised in a given culture has no problem seeing the relevance, the level of complexity, or the symbolic significance of that culture’s literature. We are all from early childhood familiar with the assumptions that underlie our own culture and its literature and art. Intelligent analysis becomes a matter of identifying smaller assumptions peculiar to the locale, idiom, and psyche of the writer."

"Republic of letters."

"Literature is analysis after the event."

"Literature is the question minus the answer."

"I got a glimpse into the uses of a certain kind of criticism this past summer at a writers' conference – into how the avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D. I saw how it was possible to gain a chair of literature on no qualification other than persistence in nipping the heels of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck."

"Comics, they say, are not literature – adventure strips lack artistic form, mental substance, and emotional appeal to any but the most moronic of minds. Can it be that 100,000,000 Americans are morons? Possibly so; but there seems to be a simpler explanation. Nine humans out of ten react first with their feelings rather than with their minds; the more primitive the emotion stimulated, the stronger the reaction. Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts."

"The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible."

"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

"The great Cham of literature. [Samuel Johnson.]"

"La mode d'aimer Racine passera comme la mode du café."

"We cultivate literature on a little oat-meal."

"Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth."

"Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry."

"Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor."

"The death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters."

"Literary Men are * * * a perpetual priesthood."

"I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself."

"A man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world."

"But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses."

"One cannot help feeling that its guardians sometimes miss the point of literature, which is not to cut gems of flashing and exquisite rarity but to communicate, to convey a meaning, an art, a story, a fantasy, even a mystery, to someone."

"During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valery and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests."

"The job of literature is to change the reader’s soul. I don’t want my readers just to enjoy themselves. I want them to go through some sort of experience that might change themselves."

"The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and Weapons forged in the mind, keen-edged, and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and battle-axe. […] Books,—lighthouses erected in the great sea of time,—books, the precious depositories of the thoughts and creations of genius,—books, by whose sorcery times past become time present, and the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn procession before our eyes;—these were to visit the firesides of the humble, and lavish the treasures of the intellect upon the poor. Could we have Plato, and Shakespeare, and Milton, in our dwellings, in the full vigor of their imaginations, in the full freshness of their hearts, few scholars would be affluent enough to afford them physical support; but the living images of their minds are within the eyes of all. From their pages their mighty souls look out upon us in all their grandeur and beauty, undimmed by the faults and follies of earthly existence, consecrated by time."

"Literature is the thought of thinking Souls."

"There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is—to teach; the function 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, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy."

"When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written."

"…that, I think, is really where lots of literature comes from. It really comes, not from knowing so much, but from not knowing. It comes from what you're curious about. It comes from what obsesses you. It comes from what you want to know."

"I think that’s what literature is about; it’s the struggle for truth. It’s the struggle for what you don’t understand"

"Many psychologists have treated literature as a whole as a mere vehicle of withdrawal from the harsh realities of existence: forgetful of the fact that literature of the first order, so far from being a mere pleasure device, is a supreme attempt to face and encompass reality-an attempt beside which a busy working life involves a shrinkage and represents a partial retreat."

"It is right for you, young men, to enrich yourselves with the spoils of all pure literature; but he who would make a favorite of a bad book, simply because it contained a few beautiful passages, might as well caress the hand of an assassin because of the jewelry which sparkles on its fingers."

"Literature is news that stays news."

"La république des lettres."

"In all the good Greek of Plato I lack my roastbeef and potato.A better man was Aristotle, Pulling steady on the bottle. I dip my hat to Chaucer, Swilling soup from his saucer,And to Master Shakespeare Who wrote big on small beer.The abstemious Wordsworth Subsisted on a curd’s-worth,But a slick one was Tennyson, Putting gravy on his venison.What these men had to eat and drink Is what we say and what we think.The influence of Milton Came wry out of Stilton.Sing a song for Percy Shelley, Drowned in pale lemon jelly,And for precious John Keats, Dripping blood of pickled beets.Then there was poor Willie Blake, He foundered on sweet cake.God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner,No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub,No belly and no bowels, Only consonants and vowels."

"The quest to discover a definition for "literature" is a road that is much traveled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they inevitably change over time. In fact, the only thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well."

"O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out; With the grene leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the Streete cries all about. Where I maie Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde; For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, is better to me than Golde."

"Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow."

"They are for company the best friends, in Doubt's Counsellors, in Damps Comforters, Time's Prospective the Home Traveller's Ship or Horse, the busie Man's best Recreation, the Opiate of idle Weariness, the Mindes best Ordinary, Nature's Garden and Seed-plot of Immortality."

"Thee will I sing in comely wainscot bound And golden verge enclosing thee around; The faithful horn before, from age to age Preserving thy invulnerable page. Behind thy patron saint in armor shines With sword and lance to guard the sacred lines; Th' instructive handle's at the bottom fixed Lest wrangling critics should pervert the text."

"Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."

"Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double; Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?"

"Aquinas was once asked, with what compendium a man might become learned? He answered "By reading of one book.""

"Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed."

"Books, the children of the brain."

"I fear the man of one book."

"Go, little Book! From this my solitude I cast thee on the Waters,—go thy ways: And if, as I believe, thy vein be good, The World will find thee after many days. Be it with thee according to thy worth: Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth."

"But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot."

"Their books of stature small they take in hand, Which with pellucid horn secured are; To save from finger wet the letters fair."

"Nor wyll suffer this boke By hooke ne by crooke Printed to be."