(1021 quotes found)
“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
John Steinbeck
“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
G. K. Chesterton
“History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.”
David C. McCullough
“A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.”
John Henry Newman
“Perversity is the muse of modern literature”
Susan Sontag
“Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.”
Vladimir Nabokov
“Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.”
Benjamin Disraeli
“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other”
Anton Chekhov
“Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.”
F. Sagan
“Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.”
Samuel Johnson
