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The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.


Vaclav Havel

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It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that mo...
THOMAS SOWELL Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we m...
VACLAV HAVEL 37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON I am Happy and satisfied with what I am. 10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will...
NEHA KOTHARI If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar...
GARY F EVANS... Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going whe...
ALI SMITH Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER The important thing is to do what you most love in the best way. If you love literature, you could b...
AARON CIECHANOVER The king may rule the kingdom, but it's the queen who moves the board.
D.M. TIMNEY I'm not an Emontional, but how???
I live with the thought that "Nothing can be returned, it has...
DEYTH BANGER Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
GAO XINGJIAN Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Unpredictability means what it means. I don't know how you define it. It is what it is.
MICHAEL KEATON What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
CRAIG GROESCHEL Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
SARA SHEPARD It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delive...
DAN FLAVIN With '10,000,' our aim was to make a film that was entertaining and a roller-coaster ride; i...
STEVEN STRAIT I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided b...
ELIZABETH GEORGE My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone. ...The most fatal thing a man can do is try...
CARSON MCCULLERS Everything known and referred to as “impossible” is often what has not been attempted before. It...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR The thing about this festival that I love is that it brings people from all walks of life together f...
ANDREW CARROLL As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult...
CAO YU The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to th...
GERTRUDE STEIN When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sig...
ITALO CALVINO Life is not all about sticking or stopping your thoughts to old memories but LIFE STARTS when you st...
NEHA KOTHARI The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is ...
OSCAR WILDE The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is...
OSCAR WILDE If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psycho...
CATHY CARUTH Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.
GEORGE AGE Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.
GEORGE ADE Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomo...
DAVID GERROLD Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literatur...
RACHEL CARSON There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an E...
IRVINE WELSH Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work ...
FRANZ GRILLPARZER I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, 'This isn't true!' It is what...
HARRY STYLES Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that...
ALMA GLUCK Tell your story to the universe and Let your actions speak LOVE.' No matter what it is.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO It is better to be a pragmatist than a lunatic.
DEBASISH MRIDHA Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primari...
STIEG LARSSON I think it is safe to say that 'Soul Mountain' is one of the most remarkable creations of modern lit...
HORACE ENGDAHL Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this real...
MATTHEW QUICK Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and...
CARLOS FUENTES You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS A little girl's fantasies are one thing, and literature is another; just as numbers require rules to...
BENJAMIN MOSER Well, the thing that I suppose is closest to my heart is Shakespeare. I really am a nerd about Shake...
TOM HIDDLESTON It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that li...
GILBERT MURRAY The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good lit...
C.S. LEWIS Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
FERNANDO PESSOA A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of li...
LELAND RYKEN Using assistive technology with your child prevents your child from missing out on content solely be...
SANDRA K. COOK I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to u...
OSCAR WILDE For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and ...
THOMAS BULFINCH But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and li...
OSCAR WILDE The difficulty is, Pell Grants are an attempt to do the right thing, and that is to give the low-inc...
DENNY REHBERG Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
ERICH FROMM I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C. Maternal absence, in one form or another, is always found in the background of the incest romance. W...
JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN I saw that there is no Nature,
That Nature doesn’t exist,
That there are hills, valleys,...
ALBERTO CAEIRO I think so much of young adult literature sort of gets ghettoized - the title 'young adult' ...
ALEXI ZENTNER Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.
P. T. BARNUM So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if...
TAIYE SELASI The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to t...
GEORGE ORWELL Literature is memory written down. All literature is memory.
WAYNE GRADY There was no Jace Wayland more real than the one he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.
CASSANDRA CLARE Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A boo...
JORGE LUIS BORGES It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written
ANDRE GIDE You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want...
CRAIG GROESCHEL Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without atte...
C. S. LEWIS Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and t...
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.
GERTRUDE STEIN Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fea...
ALEXANDR SOLZHENITSYN In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good b...
TERRY PRATCHETT You get to the point where you're like, 'I'm just doing me, and if people don't like...
BEBE REXHA I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.
ALBERTO CAEIRO Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits...
ANGELA DAVIS Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us towar...
JAMES WOOD It is a light thing for whoever keeps his foot outside trouble to advise and counsel him that suffer...
AESCHYLUS Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.
JORGE LUIS BORGES The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, f...
UNIVERSAL JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a da...
HARLAN ELLISON Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA The people who do not get jobs are often the most vulnerable in our society, and joblessness is a te...
TIM BISHOP For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and aut...
ATA AIDOO For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and aut...
AMA ATA AIDOO For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and aut...
AMA ATA AIDOO Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You're always home.
EILEEN MYLES See the world for what it is.
BEAUTIFUL!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the read...
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is...
JOHN GREEN

More Vaclav Havel

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energet...
VACLAV HAVEL There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
VACLAV HAVEL If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job t...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless o...
VACLAV HAVEL Lying can never save us from another lie.
VACLAV HAVEL The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but ...
VACLAV HAVEL Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
VACLAV HAVEL Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopeless...
VACLAV HAVEL There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must d...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes ...
VACLAV HAVEL Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
VACLAV HAVEL When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
VACLAV HAVEL A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awarenes...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes ...
VACLAV HAVEL The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serv...
VACLAV HAVEL The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful a...
VACLAV HAVEL There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
VACLAV HAVEL The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better ...
VACLAV HAVEL This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, an...
VACLAV HAVEL I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of governmen...
VACLAV HAVEL There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, ...
VACLAV HAVEL The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energe...
VACLAV HAVEL Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can co...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same a...
VACLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VACLAV HAVEL Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
VACLAV HAVEL Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell...
VACLAV HAVEL If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly pe...
VACLAV HAVEL A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: inter...
VACLAV HAVEL If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
VACLAV HAVEL None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways...
VACLAV HAVEL True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
VACLAV HAVEL My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different v...
VACLAV HAVEL You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. Y...
VACLAV HAVEL Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually...
VACLAV HAVEL Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations....
VACLAV HAVEL The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but t...
VACLAV HAVEL Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because the...
VACLAV HAVEL Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look b...
VACLAV HAVEL It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to chan...
VACLAV HAVEL As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the meas...
VACLAV HAVEL Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprisi...
VACLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VACLAV HAVEL But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always...
VACLAV HAVEL Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we m...
VACLAV HAVEL Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surpri...
VACLAV HAVEL I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
VACLAV HAVEL The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has...
VACLAV HAVEL The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West,...
VACLAV HAVEL People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one ...
VACLAV HAVEL Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It...
VACLAV HAVEL Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of...
VACLAV HAVEL The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and ...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides...
VACLAV HAVEL The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serv...
VACLAV HAVEL Poles are able to reflect their history, they respect it. Who knows if anybody will remember when we...
VACLAV HAVEL against its sense, its spirit.
VACLAV HAVEL I still very well remember the moment in 1978 when me and my friends learned that Karol Wojtyla was ...
VACLAV HAVEL They deserve our admiration, not because they suffered in prison for 25 days, but because they assum...
VACLAV HAVEL That is very dangerous, ... in an absolutely legal way and in accordance with the wording of the law...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of th...
VACLAV HAVEL For 15 years the Government of Burma has refused to implement recommendations made by the UN and the...
VACLAV HAVEL He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it ...
VACLAV HAVEL When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone,...
VACLAV HAVEL There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides...
VACLAV HAVEL Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emer...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that somethi...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that som...
VACLAV HAVEL Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote mys...
VACLAV HAVEL Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show ...
VACLAV HAVEL All respected domestic and international organizations agree that your demands are justified. Theref...
VACLAV HAVEL For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the ...
VáCLAV HAVEL What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity o...
VáCLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VáCLAV HAVEL Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually...
VáCLAV HAVEL It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As a...
VACLAV KLAUS I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there.
VACLAV KLAUS To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes havin...
VACLAV KLAUS We will also allow state companies to sell shares to their workers and will pass a law allowing citi...
VACLAV KLAUS I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining.
VACLAV KLAUS I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.
VACLAV KLAUS I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for...
VACLAV KLAUS We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young ...
VACLAV KLAUS The events in the square, of course, made a deep impression on me and many other parents.
VACLAV KLAUS By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.
VACLAV KLAUS Privatization of the state-owned economy is not yet on the agenda. We cannot do it immediately; my c...
VACLAV KLAUS It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that ...
VACLAV KLAUS I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of...
VACLAV KLAUS That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies...
VACLAV KLAUS What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome.
VACLAV KLAUS Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968...
VACLAV KLAUS I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. ...
VACLAV KLAUS Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world be...
VACLAV KLAUS People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open disside...
VACLAV KLAUS The attempts to command the climate and decide about the temperature on our planet are wrong and arr...
VACLAV KLAUS To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we loo...
VACLAV KLAUS The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith.
VACLAV HLAVATY Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is...
VACLAV KLAUS We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for ...
VACLAV KLAUS I explained to the prime minister [Asgrimsson] that for the Czech Republic it was no choice, but nec...
VACLAV KLAUS For the Czech Republic, EU entry was necessary for historical and geographical reasons. But I would ...
VACLAV KLAUS a political farce which the leftists are playing against the right.
VACLAV KLAUS In my opinion, this gives Icelanders all the benefits ensuing from it, but they have no costs connec...
VACLAV KLAUS We would definitely vote for it [Iceland's EU entry],
VACLAV KLAUS Nonsense. I would like to say, quite formally and clearly, that my government would never allow some...
VACLAV KLAUS It's probably the craziest place to grow rice. Look at the evaporation in the summer -- it's 40 degr...
VACLAV SMIL