Inspirational Quotes on Literature

“In general the unliterary do not read poetry. A growing number of those who are in other respects literary do not read poetry. And modern poetry is read by very few who are not themselves poets, professional critics, or teachers of literature.”

“Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only “mouth honour” and that decreasingly. . . It is, if you like to put it that way, not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by a tour de force. You are cutting the wood against the grain, using the tool for a purpose it was not intended to serve. It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long except to those who go to it for something quite different.”

“No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, [...] compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?”

“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”

“In good reading there ought to be no ‘problem of belief’. I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation, of either. A true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates.”

“İnsana üzərində xoşbəxt yaşamaq üçün bir qədər torpaq lazımdır, həmişəlik rahat olmaq üçün isə daha az torpaq gərək olur.”

“…since a text is ‘but a cheverel glove’ to a determined critic—since everything can be a symbol, or an irony, or an ambiguity—we shall easily find what we want. The supreme objection to this is that which lies against the popular use of all the arts. We are so busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves.”

“If literary scholarship and criticism are regarded as activities ancillary to literature, then their sole function is to multiply, prolong, and safeguard experiences of good reading. A system which heads us off from abstraction by being centred on literature in operation is what we need.”

“Poetry is, after all, only nonsense and justifies what would be considered impudence if written in prose.”

“Live in the needs of the day.”

“The arts, as they develop, grow further apart. Once, song, poetry, and dance were all parts of a single dromenon. Each has become what it now is by separation from the others, and this has involved great losses and great gains. Within the single art of literature, the same process has taken place. Poetry has differentiated itself more and more from prose.”

“Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal”

“Una storia per bambini che piace solo ai bambini non è un granché.”

“I am that poet who in times past made the light melody of pastoral poetry. In my next poem I left the woods for the adjacent farmlands, teaching them to obey even the most exacting tillers of the soil; and the farmers liked my work. But now I turn to the terrible strife of Mars.”

“Many of the comments on life which people get out of Shakespeare could have been reached by very moderate talents without his assistance.”

“Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you – apart from their meaning – a thrill like music?”

“There's just one thing: how can I make a compact with the earth evermore? I don't kiss the earth, I don't tear open her bosom; what should I do, become a peasant or a shepherd? I keep going and I don't know; have I gotten into stench and shame, or into light and joy? That's the whole trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle.”