(169 quotes found)
“Psmith is the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a plate with watercress round it, thus enabling me to avoid the blood, sweat and tears inseparable from an author's life.”
P. G. Wodehouse
“Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages”
Elmer Homrighausen
“The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.”
Clive James
“I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.”
Aaron Copland
“DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.”
Ambrose Bierce
“I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad itseems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned thatyou can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things:a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned thatregardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they'regone from your life. I've learned that making a living is not the same thing asmaking a life. I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on bothhands; you need to be able to throw some things back. I've learned that wheneverI decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I'velearned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned thatevery day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, orjust a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what youdid, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
“My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel”
Edward Abbey
“SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung In the dead language of a mummy's tongue, For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well -- Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell. Had it been such as consecrates the Bible Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel. --Barney Stims”
“I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or "literary" diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.”
James Agee
