Literary Quotes

Because of lack of personal inspiration, I thought I would try and look up famous writers’ quotes to see what they say about writing and books and literature, and I learned a thing or two.

Here are the ones I chose, feel free to comment and suggest more quotes, because I love all those quotes which make you think about things!

Oscar Wilde 
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
“The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.”

Jean-Paul Sartre
“If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.”

Aldous Huxley 
“Every man’s memory is his private literature.”

Robert Louis Stevenson
“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”

Charles Dickens 
“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

“A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.”

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

Anne Bronte 
“But he that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.”

“There is always a “but” in this imperfect world.”

Charlotte Bronte 
“Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.”

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”

“I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.”

“Look twice before you leap.”

Emily Bronte 
“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.”

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”

J. R. R. Tolkien 
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

“It’s the job that’s never started takes longest to finish.”

“Not all who wander are lost.”

“Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.”

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– Cheers!