Quotes about Literature

Christopher Rowland, who has plumbed apocalyptic literature as well as anyone in the modern era, counters much of the common interpretation of Revelation when he says, "We should not ask of apocalypses, what do they mean? Rather, we should ask, how do the images and designs work? How do they affect us and change our lives?

Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.

There is no denying that we are suffering from a collective neurosis and the novel which does not face this is not a novel of our time.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the elect have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so slow, so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called separable verbs. The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance.

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.