The book borrower…proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures…as by his failure to read these books. – Walter Benjamin
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. – Alan Bennett
The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible. – Hugh Blair
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marxs Capital. – W. E. B. Du Bois
A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug. – George Borrow
No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead. – Van Wyck Brooks
All literature is political. – LeVar Burton
English literature is a kind of training in social ethics. English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action. – Marilyn Butler
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary. – Italo Calvino
When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign — a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they dont want to hear the word mentioned. – Italo Calvino
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. – Italo Calvino
