4,370 Quotes About Literature

Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed light on it.

I like my coffee with cream and my literature with optimism.

People are talking high of Thiruvalluvar. But in practice they do not respect his teachings. They act against him and disregard him.

Our thoughts of literary renaissance should always center themselves on the removal of superstition, meanness, indignity and ignorance.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his mind’s eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a world he had once thought his own – a world of publishers and reliable suppliers. A London that was confident and competent amid its grey, puddle-strewn streets.

If arts and music, precious gifts in themselves, were akin to memory, literature was the self-knowing of the species; the human mind accumulated, a manifest of wisdom and knowledge, self-doubt and awareness, folly and foible, all transmitted through the generations. Books amplified the light of mind, reinforced the soul.

Culture is fundamental. Literature saves you. Cinema saves you.

Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.