World Literature Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about World Literature.

Quotes About World Literature

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The writer is neither saint nor tzaddik nor prophet standing at the gate; he's just another sinner who has a somewhat sharper awareness and uses slightly more precise language to describe the inconceivable reality of our world. ~ Etgar Keret
World Literature quotes by Etgar Keret
People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm. ~ Denis Diderot
World Literature quotes by Denis Diderot
Where are they, the American fiction writers whose works are interested in the question "What do these people have to do with us?" and "What are we doing out there in the world? ~ Kamila Shamsie
World Literature quotes by Kamila Shamsie
Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam. ~ George Packer
World Literature quotes by George Packer
American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World. ~ Christopher Dawson
World Literature quotes by Christopher Dawson
Literature is a mountain made of gold in this poor world! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan
World Literature quotes by Mehmet Murat Ildan
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. ~ Herman Melville
World Literature quotes by Herman Melville
I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature. ~ Edward Abbey
World Literature quotes by Edward Abbey
Writers do not write about places, they write about people who happen to live in those places. This is something that the labellers and their labels don't understand either. ~ Aminatta Forna
World Literature quotes by Aminatta Forna
Writers and scholars have emerged in recent times (some familiar, some new) to continue to challenge the notion of a literature that encompasses the world - and reaffirms our existence in it. It is a multicultural vision that embraces and includes our shrinking universe; it is a multicultural vision that the white man fears and a vision that the rest of us can celebrate. ~ Jessica Hagedorn
World Literature quotes by Jessica Hagedorn
Heartache may be bad for the soul, but it's great for bookshops. It's when we are at our lowest romantic ebb that we are likely to do the bulk of our life's reading. Adolescents who can't get a date are in a uniquely privileged position: they will have the perfect chance to get grounding in world literature. There is perhaps an important connection between love and reading, there is perhaps a comparable pleasure offered by both.

A feeling of connection may be at the root of it. There are books that speak to us, no less eloquently - but more reliably - than our lovers. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the human species, that we lie beyond comprehension. Our embarrassments, our sulks, our feelings of guilt, these phenomena may be conveyed on a page in a way that affords us with a sense of self-recognition. The author has located words to depict a situation we thought ourselves alone in feeling, and for a few moments, we are like two lovers on an early dinner date thrilled to discover how much they share (and unable to touch much of the seafood linguine in front of them, so busy are they fathoming the eyes opposite), we may place the book down for a second and stare at its spine with a wry smile, as if to say, "How lucky I ran into you. ~ Alain De Botton
World Literature quotes by Alain De Botton
Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty. ~ William Osler
World Literature quotes by William Osler
We will never know peace in the world without balance. And we will never know balance without justice for all. Yet, justice exists only where there is fairness and equality
when every man and country is treated and viewed equally. My father believes that there is no such thing as justice because all his life he has witnessed the tipping of the scales. We must change this widespread mentality by making equality a reality, not just something we read and hear about on the TV and in literature. ~ Suzy Kassem
World Literature quotes by Suzy Kassem
Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures ~ Susan Sontag
World Literature quotes by Susan Sontag
I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world. ~ Don DeLillo
World Literature quotes by Don DeLillo
Theories about world literature, of which fairy tale is a fundamental part, emphasize the porousness of borders, geographical and inguistic: no frontiercan keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning. ~ Marina Warner
World Literature quotes by Marina Warner
For centuries censorship has created best sellers because, as Michel de Montaigne said, 'To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.' (Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature) ~ Margaret Bald
World Literature quotes by Margaret Bald
There are even more statues of Robert Burns than of any other figure in world literature. Indeed if we discount figures of religion, then only Christopher Columbus has more statues than he worldwide. ~ Len G. Murray
World Literature quotes by Len G. Murray
Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world," I said, "but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be - it isn't a mirror, it's an aspiration. ~ Jasper Fforde
World Literature quotes by Jasper Fforde
You need to work yourself up into some kind of a state every morning and believe that you are doing something terribly important upon which the future of literature, if not the world, depends. Buddhism tells you that this is just a foolish fantasy. So, I try not to think too much about Buddhism early in the morning. From noon on, I think about it. ~ Pankaj Mishra
World Literature quotes by Pankaj Mishra
Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world. ~ Miguel Syjuco
World Literature quotes by Miguel Syjuco
And what do we do to fit our English-speaking Chinese, our docile and happy, our truly loyal servants, for the Asia of the future? We teach them English history: Henry the VIII, Elizabeth and Victoria, English geography, three-quarters of the book the British Isles, one quarter the rest of the world. literature, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and The Mill on the Floss, all in Basic, as they aren't to know the complexities of our tongue. We cut them from their own learning, their traditions; if that were cutting them off merely from the past, it wouldn't matter, but also and more dangerously, it cuts them from the present, and perhaps the future of Asia. With these happy eunuchs who are bound to us by their knowledge of English we run this country well as our colonial preserve. But we cannot pretend to think we can leave it to them to run it for themselves. All the revolutionaries in India were people who went back to their own literature and language. We'll see the same phenomenon here. ~ Han Suyin
World Literature quotes by Han Suyin
Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
World Literature quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. ~ Herman Melville
World Literature quotes by Herman Melville
Looking over world literature, it is almost impossible to find a single sympathetic representation of a moneylender- or anyway, a professional moneylender, which means by definition one who charges interest. I'm not sure there is another profession (executioners?) with such a consistently bad image. It's especially remarkable when one considers that unlike executioners, usurers often rank among the richest and most powerful people in their communities. Yet the very name, "usurer," evokes images of loan sharks, blood money, pounds of flesh, the selling of souls, and behind them all, the Devil, often represented as himself a kind of usurer, an evil accountant with his books and ledgers. ~ David Graeber
World Literature quotes by David Graeber
What bizarre things does not one find in a great city when one knows how to walk about and how to look! Life swarms with innocent monsters. Oh Lord my God, Thou Creator, Thou Master, Thou who hast made law and liberty, Thou the Sovereign who dost allow, Thou the Judge who dost pardon, Thou who art full of Motives and of Causes, Thou who hast (it may be) placed within my soul the love of horror in order to turn my hear to Thee, like the cure which follows the knife; Oh Lord, have pity, have pity upon the mad men and women that we are! Oh Creator, is it possible that monsters should exist in the eyes of Him alone who knoweth why they exist, how they have made themselves, and how they would have made themselves, and could not? ~ Charles Baudelaire
World Literature quotes by Charles Baudelaire
I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change that badge that I wear, but you can't change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions, and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don't spend my life in the company of crowds but individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I'd be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to sent it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world. ~ Gabriel Chevallier
World Literature quotes by Gabriel Chevallier
What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
World Literature quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about. ~ Edward Abbey
World Literature quotes by Edward Abbey
To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. ~ Susan Sontag
World Literature quotes by Susan Sontag
Dreams, always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate is the soul, the more its dreams bear it away from possibility. Each man carries in himself his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed. From birth to death, how many hours can we count that are filled by positive enjoyment, by successful and decisive action? Shall we ever live, shall we ever pass into this picture which my soul has painted, this picture which resembles you?

These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miraculous flowers, they are you. Still you, these mighty rivers and these calm canals! These enormous ships that ride upon them, freighted with wealth, whence rise the monotonous songs of their handling: these are my thoughts that sleep or that roll upon your breast. You lead them softly towards that sea which is the Infinite; ever reflecting the depths of heaven in the limpidity of your fair soul; and when, tired by the ocean's swell and gorged with the treasures of the East, they return to their port of departure, these are still my thoughts enriched which return from the Infinite - towards you. ~ Charles Baudelaire
World Literature quotes by Charles Baudelaire
All third world literature is about nation, that identity is the fundamental literary problem in the third world. The writer's identity is insecure because the nation's identity is not secure. The nation doesn't provide the third world writer with a secure identity, because the nation is colonized, it's oppressed, it's part of somebody else's empire. ~ Mark McMorris
World Literature quotes by Mark McMorris
For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full. ~ Rashers Tierney
World Literature quotes by Rashers Tierney
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein. ~ Frederick Buechner
World Literature quotes by Frederick Buechner
Women began their inner emancipation by their access to literature, by access to the world through books; an access they could not have socially or politically, or of course economically, in the world at large. ~ George Steiner
World Literature quotes by George Steiner
The Astonishment Tapes will now take its place within the growing field of international research about postwar American poetry's important contribution to world literature. Miriam Nichols has once again done exceptional scholarship. ~ Peter Gizzi
World Literature quotes by Peter Gizzi
During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire. ~ Huey Newton
World Literature quotes by Huey Newton
Doesn't the theory of relativity concern literature too? In our world there is no longer any room for the privileged observer, as there is none for the observer of the universe - we are all within. ~ Nina Berberova
World Literature quotes by Nina Berberova
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (November 11 [O.S. October 30] 1821 – February 9 [O.S. January 28] 1881) is considered one of two greatest prose writers of Russian literature, alongside close contemporary Leo Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century thought and world literature. Dostoevsky's chief ouevre, mainly novels, explore the human psychology in the disturbing political, social and spiritual context of his 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the anonymous, embittered voice of the Underground Man, is considered by Walter Kaufmann as the "best overture for existentialism ever written." Source: Wikipedia ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
World Literature quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If God hadn't rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
World Literature quotes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation. ~ James Buchan
World Literature quotes by James Buchan
As a journalist, if you want to explore the world, you have to take a risk. ~ Najibullah Quraishi
World Literature quotes by Najibullah Quraishi
Sometimes, the only things in this world that make sense are the moon, my madness and your hands messing up my hair, while your teeth sink into my soul. ~ Melody Lee
World Literature quotes by Melody  Lee
We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
World Literature quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The human consciousness is really homogeneous. There is no complete forgetting, even in death. ~ D.H. Lawrence
World Literature quotes by D.H. Lawrence
The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies. ~ Huston Smith
World Literature quotes by Huston Smith
There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
World Literature quotes by Barbara Kingsolver
I have 8-year-old twins, and I want them to grow up in a world where they can be anyone they want without any shame, without holding back, without being judged for it. ~ Rib Hillis
World Literature quotes by Rib Hillis
Many lives will be saved, because I was able to see through to the Soul of the World." The ~ Paulo Coelho
World Literature quotes by Paulo Coelho
From everything that I've read, people before the collapse were what I would politely call "weak". I'm sure they were nice enough, smart enough, and probably thought they had everything under control, but it doesn't take much to shatter your world. Luk and I had been training for this our entire lives, preparing to enter a world of harsh realities and it's nearly been the end us both multiple times. Back in the day, when chaos reigned, it was kill or be killed, there was little middle ground. The weak definitely did not inherit the Earth. Strength is survival.

Sojourn Book III - The Beastlands ~ B.D. Messick
World Literature quotes by B.D. Messick
Im very clear that everyone in the world loves me. I just dont expect them to realize it yet. ~ Byron Katie
World Literature quotes by Byron Katie
In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea. ~ Gao Xingjian
World Literature quotes by Gao Xingjian
The more I see of the world, the less inclined I am to think well of it. ~ Elizabeth Bennett
World Literature quotes by Elizabeth Bennett
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world. ~ Gore Vidal
World Literature quotes by Gore Vidal
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.'
That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked.
One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
World Literature quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle
If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate? ~ Joseph Heller
World Literature quotes by Joseph Heller
But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms. ~ Oscar Wilde
World Literature quotes by Oscar Wilde
It's very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can't imagine. ~ Alice Walker
World Literature quotes by Alice Walker
Some believe that everyone is born with a moral compass already inside them, like an appendix, or a fear of worms. Others believe that a moral compass develops over time, as a person learns about the decisions of others by observing the world and reading books. In any case, a moral compass appears to be a delicate device, and as people grow older and venture out into the world it often becomes more and more difficult to figure out which direction one's moral compass is pointing, so it is harder and harder to figure out the proper thing to do. ~ Lemony Snicket
World Literature quotes by Lemony Snicket
The reality is, if you have a high-level-energy dog, it's not going to be happy with a one-hour walk. Those types of dogs are going to require more than one hour of physical challenge in the outside world. ~ Cesar Millan
World Literature quotes by Cesar Millan
As far as I'm concerned, the world is composed of stories. For architects, the world is composed of buildings, for actors the world is composed of theatres, or whatever. For me, the world is simply composed of stories; when I look, that's what I see. ~ Neil Gaiman
World Literature quotes by Neil Gaiman
What is the benefit of egoism? It is only through the benefit of egoism that people get their daughters married, get their sons married, walk around as a father and say 'mine, mine'! The entire world is enjoying the benefit of egoism. The Gnanis (Self-realized) enjoy the benefit of the Self. ~ Dada Bhagwan
World Literature quotes by Dada Bhagwan
We pray Thee, O Christ, to keep us under the spell of immortality. My we never again think and act as if Thou were dead. Let us more and more come to know Thee as a living Lord who hath promised to them that believe: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Help us to remember that we are praying to the Conqueror of Death, that we may no longer be afraid nor dismayed by the world's problems and threats, since Thou hast overcome the world. In Thy strong name, we ask for Thy living presence and Thy victorious power. Amen. ~ Peter Marshall
World Literature quotes by Peter Marshall
There's plenty of room for everyone in the world. Enough money, riches, and beauty for all to share. God has made enought for everyone, so let us all begin then by sharing it fairly. ~ Anne Frank
World Literature quotes by Anne Frank
And to top everything he's got this problem he can't let her know how he feels: What-he's shy? Shy! Tell me who in this goddamn world is shy? Young, old, the lame and halt. Clobber you over the head with what they feel.
Oh Man I wish just once in my long fucked-up life someone had come up to me who was too shy to tell me what they thought of me ... ~ E.L. Doctorow
World Literature quotes by E.L. Doctorow
Don't be afraid to go left when the world is going right. The French learned that the people have power to make change, they did this through love for their countrymen! They wanted a better France for themselves, their children's future, and their children's future. The "French Revolutions" and peaceful marches against their governments proved that people have to change the world around them, that we all have the ability to change this world for a better future. ~ Martin R. Lemieux
World Literature quotes by Martin R. Lemieux
Anything worth doing in this world is incredibly difficult to do. ~ Jon Foreman
World Literature quotes by Jon Foreman
Kyōko: ...You're the type who doesn't fight alongside people who slow you down, right? You pick the one thing in the world you wanna protect, and you protect it to the end. ...That's the right answer. ~ Magica Quartet
World Literature quotes by Magica Quartet
When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees! ~ W.B.Yeats
World Literature quotes by W.B.Yeats
The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. ~ Pope Francis
World Literature quotes by Pope Francis
A gift is not something to possess. Rather, it is something to hold for a brief moment before we hand it back to a hurting world with a bit more attached to it than it had when we received it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough
World Literature quotes by Craig D. Lounsbrough
There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops ... when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living ...
~ T.H. White
World Literature quotes by T.H. White
The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world. ~ Sara Paretsky
World Literature quotes by Sara Paretsky
Should I ever get married, I actually want a really small wedding. A private ceremony that's shrouded in secrecy. I want something intimate. Something between me and my lover. Not a huge party that is really, this grandiose gesture over something that two people should be celebrating between them, alone, and not the world. ~ Nicole DSettemi
World Literature quotes by Nicole DSettemi
I'm interested in finding sounds and ideas that help bring the audience into the world that we [moviemakes] are all trying to create. Sometimes that's with synthesizers, and sometimes that's with French horns. I love using all of them, depending on the scenario. ~ Joseph Trapanese
World Literature quotes by Joseph Trapanese
Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children? ~ Gerrard Winstanley
World Literature quotes by Gerrard Winstanley
In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas. ~ Michael Crichton
World Literature quotes by Michael Crichton
5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. ~ Anonymous
World Literature quotes by Anonymous
People who focus on what they can't control are usually depressed, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed and lost. Sure, there's no way to look at the world and say it's fair, even or just. ~ Tony Robbins
World Literature quotes by Tony Robbins
The only time it got really crazy was during 'Batman.' Anywhere I went in the world, people knew who I was. I was being offered these huge films that would have taken my career to a different level, and I decided to put on the brakes. I knew if I continued on that track, I probably wouldn't have gotten married. ~ Chris O'Donnell
World Literature quotes by Chris O'Donnell
People have destructive impulses. Some of us want to see the world just in ruins for the fun of it, even it we're ruined along with it. ~ Rick Riordan
World Literature quotes by Rick Riordan
There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected. But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem of saving the human race from extinction. ~ John Foster Dulles
World Literature quotes by John Foster Dulles
My wife comes from a foodie family so I've been indoctrinated into that. I had sweetbreads the other night, and I have to say, not my favorite thing in the world You're eating a gland. ~ Armie Hammer
World Literature quotes by Armie Hammer
There are indications because of new inventions, that 10, 15, or 20 nations will have a nuclear capacity, including Red China, by the end of the Presidential office in 1964. This is extremely serious ... I think the fate not only of our own civilization, but I think the fate of world and the future of the human race, is involved in preventing a nuclear war. ~ John F. Kennedy
World Literature quotes by John F. Kennedy
The best words I ever heard about making your own reputation," Gram said, looking over her shoulder into the back seat, "is that you come into the world crying while everyone is smiling at the miracle of you, and you should live your life so when you leave it, you're smiling, but everyone else is crying because the miracle of you is gone. ~ Terri Farley
World Literature quotes by Terri Farley
Gideon woke up ready to conquer the world, and he liked to start that domination with me.
How lucky was I? ~ Sylvia Day
World Literature quotes by Sylvia Day
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