The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
To literature belongs the mighty privilege of embalming, for all ages, the departed kings of intellect. There they repose within the eternal pyramids of their fame. – Robert Aris Willmott, “Glimpses of the Pageant of Literature,” c.1844
The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference. – Anatole France
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan. – Alain de Botton
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. – Alexis de Tocqueville
