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"Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. ... Again and again I ask impatiently, "Why concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses?" They fly hither and thither in my thought like blind birds beating the air with ineffectual wings. I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men."
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Exlpore more Literature quotes
"Shakespeare shook his head and sunk his chin into his ruff, making him look more owl-like than ever. "I have written about other worlds often enough. I have said what I can say. There are many kinds of reality. This is but one kind."
"Pages entertain me more than pictures do."
"A book lives a new life every time it is read."
"I read to know the past, I write to express my love for the future."
"I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr."
"Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone."
"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job."
"Considering that the modern and contemporary literature taught in most universities is largely bleak, cynical, morbid, pessimistic, misanthropic dogmatism, often written by suicidal types who sooner or later kill themselves with alcohol or drugs, or shotguns, Professor Takuda was a remarkably cheerful man."
"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart."
Explore more quotes by Helen Keller
"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."
"I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace."
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."
"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."
"Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see."
"We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings."
"No pessimist discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."
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