A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.
Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.
I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.
The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember
The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything - literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient.
Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
A few times a year I'll remember that I love old literature, too. Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" is one of my 10 favorite books. I have to go out of my way to remember to pick up a book like that, but when I do I'm blown away by how very relevant it still is.
This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.
Superstition is the poetry of life.
The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.
that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.
Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.
Loving once and only once is possible - anything is possible.
Pray look better, Sir. . . those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.