#literature

"The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy."

"It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it."

"The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools."

"The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature."

"No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes"

"How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display."

"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote."

"There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured."

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood."

"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle."

"The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one."

"I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page."

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."

"A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo."

"It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in."

"He ate and drank the precious words,His spirit grew robust;He knew no more that he was poor,Nor that his frame was dust.He danced along the dingy days,And this bequest of wingsWas but a book. What libertyA loosened spirit brings!"

"He knows he will be born again, And start fresh anew."

"The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters."

"Fly without wings; Dream with open eyes; See in darkness."