Literary Critic

Quotes & Thinkers in Literary Critic

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"And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of treesand changing leaves."

"I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens."

"On ne reçoit pas la sagesse, il faut la découvrir soi-même après un trajet que personne ne peut faire pour nous, ne peut nous épargner."

"Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant."

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion"

"His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before."

"Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being."

"Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die."

140 quotes

🇺🇸Christopher Hitchens

Philosophy

atheism

1949–2011

"Peace through Strength," surely history's most exploded nostrum."

"The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place."

"On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it."

"Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in."

78 quotes

🇺🇸Gore Vidal

Literature

postmodern literature

1925–2012

"You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country."

"There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea."

"History breaks down in images not into stories."

"The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity."

"I don't even have an E-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages."

"The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he."

"To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act."

"I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts."

"I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches."

"All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens."

"The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations."

374 quotes

🇬🇧W. Somerset Maugham

Literature

1874–1965

"Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother."

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

"When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights."

131 quotes

John Ruskin

Art

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

1819–1900

"Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime."

"To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason."

"Men who shrink from penetration of the female body are paralyzed by justifiable apprehension, since they are returning to our uncanny site of origin."

"It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."

"The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil."

"Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise."

"'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'."

"Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel."

"An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may."

"Perhaps we'd understood each other too well to be attracted to one another. There were no occlusions in communication, those breaks in understanding that awaken desire."

25 quotes

🇬🇧Logan Pearsall Smith

Literature

1865–1946

"Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own."

"By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a prescence, a genius loci, a potency."

"Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right."

"What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."

39 quotes

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