#literature

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#beauty #literature #philosophy #art

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#experience

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#like #literature #money #sinews #those

All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. ↗

— Steven Brust

#book #consists #cool #degree #like

To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century. ↗

— James Buchan

#better #better off #century #couple #ever

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. ↗

— Thomas Bulfinch

#cannot #elegant #knowledge #language #literature

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. ↗

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

#classic #literature #modern #newest #oldest

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. ↗

— Michael N. Castle

#african #african american #american #angelou #believes

I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened. ↗

— Norman Maclean

#literature #purpose #life

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature. ↗

— Morris Raphael Cohen

#forget #her #kinship #literature #philosophy