Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Literary.
To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, 1
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
John Morley
Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is interior. In Prometheus the will is securely nailed down by nails of brass and cannot get loose; besides, it has by its side two watchers
Victor Hugo
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
Elizabeth Drew
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.
Lord (George Gordon) Byron
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike
Harold Bloom
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Literature is news that STAYS news.
Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934
In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.
Thomas Carlyle
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
Samuel Johnson
In describing the Mound-builders no effort has been made to paint their costume, their modes of life or their system of government. They are presented to the reader almost exclusively under a single aspect, and under the influence of a single emotion. It matters not to us whether they dwelt under a monarchical or popular form of polity; whether king or council ruled their realms; nor, in fine, what was their exact outward condition. It is enough for us to know, and enough for our humanity to inquire, that they existed, toiled, felt and suffered; that to them fell, in these pleasant regions, their portion of the common heritage of our race, and that around those ancient hearth-stones, washed to light on the banks of the far western rivers, once gossiped and enjoyed life, a nation that has utterly faded away.http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1839Mat1.htm
Cornelius Mathews, Behemoth: A L
This life's dim windows of the soulDistorts the heavens from pole to poleAnd leads you to believe a lieWhen you see with, not through, the eye.
William Blake, The Everlasting G
If the radiance of a thousand sunsWere to burst at once into the skyThat would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds.note: this was supposedly quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer on July 16, 1945 when the first atomic bomb was tested
Hindu Spiritual, Bhagavad Gita
Rough wind, that moanest loudGrief too sad for song;Wild wind, when sullen cloudKnells all the night long;Sad storm, whose tears are vain,Bare woods, whose branches strain,Deep caves and dreary main, - Wail, for the world's wrong!
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dirge
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?Since sorrow never comes too late,And happiness too swiftly flies.Thought would destroy their paradise.No more; where ignorance is bliss,'Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Pr
On the road to Mandalay Where the flyin' fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the bay.
Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay
The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
William Wordsworth, The World is
As I was going up the stairI met a man who wasn't thereHe wasn't there again todayI wish, I wish he'd stay away.
Hughes Mearns, The Psychoed
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,By each let this be heard,Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word,The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Readi
You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...
Israel Zangwill, Melting Pot, Th
