literary quotes

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger isalwaysthat hewill not recognize when he is dull.

- Louis Stanton Auchincloss
  Pioneers and Caretakers:  A Study of Nine American Women Novelists.

Myclaimtoliterary fameisthat Iusedto deliver meattoa woman who becameT. S. Eliot's mother-in-law.

- Alan Bennett
  In the Observer, 26  Apr. The lady in question was the mother of Eliot's wife Valerie Fletcher; Bennett's father was the butcher in the sameYorkshire village.

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

-Wilson
  You've Had Your Time, ch.1.

   Neither you nor I nor anyone else can describe the volcanic landscapes a poor girl strays into when she marries a literary man.

-JohnWilliam Cheever
  Letter to Frederick Exley,16  Jun.

A literary manwith a wooden legand all Print is open to him.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
^5  Mr Boffin speaking of Silas  Wegg. Our Mutual Friend, bk.1, ch.5.

Aphorismsgive you more for your time and money than any other literary form.Only the poem comes near to it, but then most good poems either start off from an aphorism orarrive at one† Aphorisms and epigrams are the corner-stones of literaryart.

- Louis Dudek
Collected in Notebooks1960^1994 (1994).

The people which ceases to care for its literary inheritance becomes barbaric; the people which ceases to produce literature ceases to move in thought and sensibility.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.

Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images.

- Northrop Frye
The Bush Garden,'Conclusion'.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

-William Hazlitt
Sketches and Essays (published1839),'Footmen'.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.

- David Hume
  My Own Life, ch.1.

There are two things which I am confident I can do very well: one is an introduction to a literary work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner; the other is a conclusion, shewing from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and to the public.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

Classical quotations is the parole of literary men all over the world.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Remark, 8 May. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

It does no harm to repeat, as often as you can,'Without me the literary industry would not exist'.

- Doris May ne  e Tayler Lessing
  In The Author, spring.

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups† Literary intellectuals at one poleat the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

- C(harles) P(ercy), 1st Baron Snow
  TheTwo Cultures, Rede Lecture.

   I will endeavour to put the word sex in capital letters on the cover of every issue of the Literary Review under my editorship, regardless of its actual contents† My purpose is simply to embolden booksellers.

- Auberon Alexander Waugh
  In the DailyTelegraph, 9 May.

No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance.

-Walt(er) Whitman
  'A Backward Glance O'erTravel'd Roads'.