The object of literature is to make man a wiser and happier being. The poet makes us happy because he tells us how we may become so. – Charles Lanman, “Thoughts on Literature,” 1840
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
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether. – Cyril Connolly
In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyones existence in this world. – Wislawa Szymborska
