Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

Literature is the thought of thinking Souls.

Literary Men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Five miles meandering with mazy motion, Through dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank the tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

Republic of letters.

Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called "Huckleberry Finn."

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

The death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters.

. . . A man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

The republic of letters.

There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. - Thomas De Quincey ,

The fashion of liking Racine will pass away like that of coffee.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.

We cultivate literature on a little oat-meal.

The great Cham of literature.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.